


How I Dumped Your Boyfriend

by ArticulatioHumeri



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Autism, Comedy, F/F, Feminism, Gen, Humour, Warning: Strong Language, also flying horses, and we are not amused, everyone's ace, we see what you did there Marvel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-10-06 17:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10340376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArticulatioHumeri/pseuds/ArticulatioHumeri
Summary: - A Tale Of Worthiness, Freedom, And Flying Horse Droppings -Months after having been left by her superhero significant other, Jane Foster still sees herself defined through him by whoever she meets. Sick and tired of the world, the universe, and everything, she chooses to withdraw to the desert - not taking into calculation that aliens, wandering alien wannabe-gods, more aliens, an unnerving intern who always wanted to take a road trip on an alien spaceship, actual alien spaceships, alien building tools, and alien warrioresses might pop up wherever they are not expected.Boyfriends will be dumped.Horse dung will fly.-------------------------------------------A story that happened after a certain CEO made sexist comments about the characters of both Jane Foster and (movie) Valkyrie.Warning: contains occasional strong language





	1. Chapter 1

Being used to living in limited space did not mean Jane approved of the arrangements.

‘Get up!’ Darcy shouted into her ear, doubtlessly still standing in the door.

The cavalcade of curses in Jane’s brain, fortunately, did not make it all the way down to her lips:

‘Grrmphmm…’

‘This is not a drill. We’ve been through this,’ Darcy said in her no-grrmphmm-allowed boarding-school-supervisor voice. ‘It’s up with the clock, not three hours later when the tiny rest of decency still left to you drives you into the bathroom.’

Only because Jane was too lazy for cleaning. One had to be diligent to be lazy. It took a shitload of effort. Hah!

‘I don’t wanna go,’ she groaned as Darcy manoeuvred her the whole 1.5 steps to the hotel room’s minuscule bathroom.

‘We’ve talked about this, too.’ Jane was too tired to search for compassion, faked or real, in Darcy’s voice. ‘You have to go.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do. It’s gonna be good for you, too.’

‘No, it won’t. It’ll be awful.’

Darcy dumped Jane on the (closed) toilet lid so she had to look up at her friend’s impressive silhouette.

‘Doctor Jane Esther Foster,’ Darcy declared, ‘what you do in private when things aren’t going the way you want them to go is your thing. But today is not your thing, and it’s not about lurching around in your trailer eating ice cream and cereal and cursing the universe.’

Jane never cursed the universe. She was an astrophysicist, for Heaven’s sake. Also, she missed her trailer, all alone on the other side of the planet. But Darcy had not yet finished:

‘Today you will go and receive your Nobel Prize in person, and you will be _splendid_. Is that understood?’

Doctor Jane Esther Foster growled, but did not dare to reply. She’d call Amnesty right after this was over. This time she would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter heavily features Christine Miserandino's [spoon theory](https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/).

Back she was.

The heat had certainly not stung as bad when they had lived here before, had it? Had there been so much dust and sand? Hadn’t the light been fresher, without all that dull orange in it? The paint on the buildings brighter, more intact? The people less grumpy?

‘Honestly, boss, the things I do for you…’ Darcy snarled. Jane did not have to work hard to suppress a sigh. There weren’t enough spoons left to her even for such a small gesture.

 _No_ , the voice of reason snarled. _This place was happy when you came here_ , well, as happy as a desert village could be before alien robots and magical building tools leave their unwanted graffiti. Her direct neighbours hadn’t blamed Jane, not openly. Other townspeople hadn’t been so kind.

At least Smith Motors had been and always would be a dump. It wasn’t all bad if the bad things hadn’t changed, right?

Talking was bad, too, so Jane picked up her suitcase and laptop pouch, wheezed at the weight – she had always carried her own baggage, thank you very much, why was that so hard now – and walked over to her old trailer. It had been more silvery back in the days, a relict from an old lady of the neighbourhood who had been very into camping and hand-crocheted doilies from the seventies. Now the once so futuristic silver hull looked dulled by the endless gusts of sandy wind, there were more bumps in places where mere driving wouldn’t leave them, and someone had sprayed “ET’S WHORE” all over the side in an atrocious shade of pink. Had Jane had enough spoons, she’d have written “NOT ANYMORE” over it, in blue. Had she had any red paint, she’d have corrected the punctuation mistakes, too.

The door wasn’t locked, but apparently nobody had dared to enter. Maybe they hadn’t even tried. The thought of how much this whole thing was a perfect metaphor for her life made Jane scoff in bitterness. Even her gorgeous mountain of self-pity was depicted, if there was any use to the crowded, neglected, useless garbage of her once-upon-a-time-laboratory.

‘Food,’ Darcy’s voice bellowed from directly behind her, making Jane jump. The intern had an unnervingly loud mouth and simultaneously quiet step. ‘You need food.’

‘Not hungry.’

‘You need science then.’

‘Not curious.’

‘You need a boyfriend.’

‘As much as a rash.’

Darcy’s hand slapped down on Jane’s shoulder, making the latter jump again. ‘Just a test, boss. Tells me you’re not as sick as you seem. Right, food it is.’

‘Stop making my decisions!’ Jane snapped.

It wasn’t a fair move, but she had been working at this sentence for days, weeks even. All that labour shouldn’t be for nothing. Not like the rest of her work. Who was a fatalist extraterrestrial bitch now?

Darcy, her soul be blessed, simply rolled her eyes, grabbed Jane’s lower arm (the part covered by her jacket, not her bare hand, which was taboo), and pulled her out of the trailer. Jane managed to kick the door shut, which caused some of the fairy lights Darcy had installed over the entrance some years ago to dissolve into a brittle mess, mixing with the dirt on the ground. Metaphors everywhere.

If only it had been dark and rainy, the way it never was here, the ancient neon lights of Isabela’s Diner could have shone through the gloom like a church’s windows, promising soul-saving in exchange for one’s whole-hearted belief. But Izzy could not save souls, and therefore never demanded more than the price on the bill and quiet behaviour. Both things Jane felt up to today. Not enough spoons for a row, but some science prize money in her pocket.

The diner’s owner herself nodded her approval when Darcy pushed open the doors and Jane through them. The other guests in the half-full restaurant (positivity, Foster) did not dare to notice them. Jane knew the feeling. You always feared being disciplined with a spray water bottle by Isabela if you so much as moved too hastily in the diner. Jane would have congratulated Darcy for picking the perfect place, hadn’t it been the only food business in town. The petrol station at the outskirts, as the locals called it, offered a bit of takeaway stuff, but only strangers on a quick stop ate there. The locals knew better than to cheat on Izzy. Rumour went she had cameras there. Other rumours said… other things about her ability to know where everyone was at every time of the day.

Welcome to Nightvale Antiguo.

‘The usual?’ the owner asked with an angelic smile. There were definitely no angels around.

‘Cool, thanks, Izzy,’ Darcy nodded. Jane wanted a table in a corner, but her intern manoeuvred her right to the centre of the room, to their old place. It wouldn’t matter, after all. Those ludicrous enough to stare at them would do so wherever they sat, and the dark corner always looked suspicious. Besides, Jane was sure that she smelt the aftershave of Old Tom over there. His aftershave had a habit of lingering, sometimes in places Old Tom had never visited in his whole life. Jane was sure that Izzy charged him for it.

She gulped down her food without caring for what it was. It made her feel too full, as food always did, and even more guilty of lazily stuffing herself while she should work her arse off to prove that she deserved so much as half of her humble titles. It was like college all over again, except this time she knew the guilt to be a faint afterglow of anorexia and impostor’s syndrome. Jane didn’t have any spoons for that crap either. Survival of the spoonless.

‘Back in town then?’ Izzy asked as Jane settled the bill at the counter. ‘And congratulations. For the prize, I mean. We were all very sad to hear that you and your young man aren’t together anymore. A pity, really. Can you even continue your work now, without, you know…’

‘I have everything I need,’ Jane said quietly. ‘My head, my intern, my lab.’

And no questions asked.

* * *

There was no such thing as Hell except for other people, but had there been such a place, even they’d have banned telephones, Jane was sure.

‘Darling! How do you do?’ the carefully crafted melody of her mother’s voice floated through thousands of miles of optical fibre cable.

‘Tired.’

‘Oh dear, have I got the time conversion wrong again? It’s not six pm at yours?’

‘Three am.’

‘I’m so sorry, honey. But now you’re awake anyway, how are you?’ the voice returned to its trademark cheerfulness.

Jane sighed. It was impossible by natural law to be angry with her mother, unless one tried very, very hard and burnt up enough mental energy to power a mediocre music box. Philomena Foster was an artist, and not just any artist, but the face and voice of the new hippie movement. It wasn’t a trend Philomena had started, as she had just never stopped being a hippie. The sweetest, most lovable kind, but still someone from the clouds, while Jane hardly ever found the verve to lift herself from the ground she had fallen asleep on. Being able to calculate the physical force necessary for the task did not make it any easier.

‘Still tired.’

‘Aw, my poor little booboo. Want me to sing you something? I got this amazing herbal tea last month, it brings your chi into perfect balance. I could send you some if you like.’

‘Uh, no, thanks, Mom. I’m sure it’s just a lack of iron. Please don’t send me anything, I swear, I’ll eat meat, not any chemical supplements.’ Whilst Jane had to admit that her mother’s expressions of love, whenever Jane was lucky enough to raise enough attention to get one, did not lack in abundance, Philomena’s parcels tended to get delayed at check-ups. That some of aforementioned parcels had a habit of walking around on their own did not help. Although in one case that had only been due to a malfunctioning toy robot Jane had indeed wanted very much, at the age of five. The parcel had been sent when she was about to move to college.

Contrary to what it looked like to anyone outside the family, her parents’ marriage was still very much intact, and Jane was a hundred percent sure (which should have been impossible for a scientist of her dedication) that it would remain so forever. The arrangement was far too convenient for two of them. Jane’s father, Professor Isaac Foster, had received his prestigious chair at a university in Boston, and Philomena could pick up her never-settling artist lifestyle all over ancient Europe, as much as both of these things existed in their imagination. The same convenience had made them place their little daughter in Boston, where Jane had been raised by her books and a range of nannies whenever her father was too busy with his studies. Which had been always. She still cringed at the sentence “Hey Darling, good news: I’ve found a new nanny for you, you’ll be great friends.” No wonder she was so bad with friendships, and relationships, and everything involving the world outside her shell. Judging by the one person still sticking to her, internships were the only thing Jane could somehow manage, and that was most likely due to Darcy’s qualities, not hers.

‘So… what’s up at yours?’ Jane asked, bringing about the inevitable gush of art-scene topics she wouldn’t understand or did not want to understand, but had no right of choice. Ten minutes later she reminded her mother of the phone bill, which technically shouldn’t bother the very successful artist, but Philomena had much less of an understanding for her accounts than her daughter – or for her daughter. A profitable arrangement for her agent.

During her mother’s harmonic stream of tales about everything that had happened in the precisely seven days since their last talk, Jane had kicked herself out of bed, arranged a quick wash, and put on some clothes. It was more than she had done the whole day before. Talking to her mother was depressing, and often unnerving, but at least that could mean an extra spoon. Cutlery was rare these days.

The sun would not bother to rise for several hours, and not even the cats bothered to make the night their own at this end of the world. Either it was the town’s general air of clinical depression, a relatively safe measure of contraception, or the animals had seen what leaked out of the abandoned bit of industry development in the north, of which nobody knew what had ever been done there, and decided that it wasn’t a place to raise kittens. That would explain why no set of paws had moved into Jane’s trailer during her absence, too.

Making cereals was too much work. It required a more or less clean and empty bowl, digestible milk from the refrigerator, the opening of a new box of cereal in addition to the old one which only contained half a serving (gosh, complicated), and, of all things, a spoon. Saving herself the trouble, Jane gulped down something pastry-like Darcy had deposited on her laughable three square inches of a kitchen counter, downed the cold cup of tea that had developed a ring of dried brown yuck where the liquid had evaporated during the night – another one, as those smudges were impossible to scrub off, rendering an age indicator to the mugs in the tradition of tree trunks – and left the trailer.

Jane had always preferred night over day. No bright sunlight that blinded her, less people, more quiet. An illusion of daylight problems being far, far away. Breathing was easier, although one could bicker about the temperature. Maybe they had a blanket left in the lab.

On her way over to the old car dealer building that presently hosted her laboratory, Jane could not help but admit that at this time of night, being on Earth lost a bit of its usual dread. At least here, when she breathed in the desert smells that for a change did not bite so much, with the handful of lights from the city and the myriad of lights in shape of stars in the sky, everything seemed a bit less restricting, a bit more free. As if just for a moment it did not matter that Jane had no plan, no way, nothing to cling to and work for and dedicate her existence to like the lost soul she was. For a moment she wanted to stretch, the way she had been told to do in order to release stress, lie down on the asphalt, and just stare up at the stars, trying to ignore the memories it brought back to the main building’s roof with its little fireplace and the deck chairs.

Fortunately Jane discovered the man on the other side of the road before he could do so.

She had never seen homeless people in Puente Antiguo, which should have been horrifying enough in itself, but doing so now did not make it much better. Jane hoped it was nobody she knew, or should have known, little as she was able to remember names or faces. The man had made himself a bed in the corner between two buildings and seemed asleep. An odd choice of place, here at the edge of town where there was little to no shelter from the desert winds. Would he freeze? Should she call someone? Who?

The man let out a majestic snore and turned around, sawing several audio trees with the noise of his breathing. Jane quickly calculated his body size, compared it to hers, and decided that she didn’t have much of a chance in case this was a SHIELD employee in hiding, or worse, not a SHIELD employee in hiding. She never wanted to face another giant robot from space again, and much less the people who could command such robots.

Darcy slept in the city, in a room she had rented from an old guy whose dogs she took care of twice a day or whenever she wasn’t typing her post grad dissertation, so there was no way to contact the eternal intern without causing noise or having to pass the stranger. Jane decided that it would be best to leave the scene and discuss it with Darcy in the morning. In public, surrounded by people who wouldn’t have much to say against a space robot, but very much against another bunch of SHIELD’s vacuum cleaner sales personnel.

For the first time, she regretted the glass walls surrounding her former sanctuary. It had not been easy to set up the lab in the first place, gathering meagre research budgets, building her devices, programming software that could do the complex calculations, then finding out where the software had failed in tasks a human could do so much more accurately if given some hours instead of seconds. Finding an intern, find support from other scientists, Erik to begin with. Erik, who was so happy hopping around for SHIELD now that they hardly ever spoke. Against her better knowledge, Jane hoped that he wasn’t begrudging her the Nobel medal. Ha ha, sure.

Even when she had received her belongings back from SHIELD, getting the lab to work for a second time had been hard work and a major reset in Jane’s research. But back then she had had friends, and hope. Most of all hope. For a handful of weeks, the three of them had been able to synchronise, and it had been magnificent. She had been almost happy then, if it hadn’t been for the biting little voice at the back of her head saying that everything had only been a dream, and that she had no right to dream, not for that one, not for any dream in particular. A voice that had become omnipresent soon, and impossible to reject after that. A voice that had been proven ultimately right as of now.

Staring at the messy tables and floors, the dusty devices crammed into every corner and the telescopes horribly maladjusted, Jane allowed herself to sigh. How long had it been since she had come back to this place?

Three months, one week and five days, the voice in her head said, not without a sneer.

Just like every time Jane had managed to open the glass doors since then, she turned around, lurched out, and closed them behind her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if AO3 has an automatic update alert service, so I thought about updating weekly to make it easier for those who want to follow this story. How about Fridays?
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy Lewis had once slept through a magical thunderstorm. Another time, when Jane had confessed that she wasn’t sure whether or not she had taken her pill one night two years ago and was feeling queasy, Darcy had shrugged, fished out the card of a local gynaecologist, tossed herself to her other side and slept on. Additionally, the last time they had been on a ferry to an island in Norway and had been shaken by a storm, Darcy had told Jane to wake her up when the water was about to drench her sheet. No earlier.

This morning, when she learnt that Jane had not helped a homeless person, she crossed half the town’s length in a heartbeat.

‘Must we really repeat the lessons on privilege and how you’re _not_ helping feminism?’ Darcy growled through teeth that could bite off bottle tops. Jane had seen it once.

‘No, we don’t,’ Jane gave back a little feebly. She couldn’t explain her behaviour either. Normally she’d at least make sure the man was doing okay and leave him a snack or some money. She could have brought him to Izzy, even if three o’clock in the morning was not standard diner time. ‘I don’t know. I felt threatened.’

‘By an old guy sleeping on the pavement?’ Darcy snarled.

‘You looked at him?’

‘I have an excellent optometrist,’ Darcy gave back, pushing up her glasses. ‘Now give me that blanket. You take the food. Let me do the talking.’

With a heavy paper bag from Izzy’s that required two hands to carry, Jane followed Darcy out of the trailer. She wouldn’t get any breakfast herself before this was done, close to fainting with hunger or no, so she could as well go and hope she’d stay conscious until it was her turn to eat.

The man still slept where Jane had seen him last night. Thickly wrapped in something big and dust-coloured about to disintegrated into, well, dust, he snored peacefully.

‘Don’t wake him up,’ said Jane.

‘I gotta make sure he’s okay.’

‘He won’t be okay if he’s so tired that he sleeps both day- and night time.’ Most homeless people chose one of the two, a lot of them opting for daytime because it was warmer and less dangerous.

‘If he does sleep that much indeed, he might not be okay at all and need a doctor,’ Darcy gave back.

Jane hung her head. Now that she saw the mop of dirty grey hair peeking out from underneath the covers, she felt guilty for feeling threatened by the man, instead of calling the police, or an ambulance. But still she felt threatened. What was it with this guy?

‘Excuse me? Sir?’ Darcy tried. ‘Are you okay?’ She waited for a moment, and when there was a bit of stirring under the blankets, tried again in Spanish. Jane had once asked her how many languages she spoke, which had thrown Darcy into quite a bit of reflection. The intern picked the stuff up as she went.

‘Sir?’ Darcy said again, this time lightly putting her hand on where, approximately, the man’s shoulder would be.

He jumped to his feed with such speed that Darcy had no time to so much as think of a reaction. Arms stretched out, fingers formed to claws, he gave off a loud, unintelligible growl. The pose looked a lot like a bear in a foul mood, and it surely would have scared away any specimen at question.

‘Uhm – sorry,’ Darcy said, now standing so close to the stranger that her nose almost touched his chest. Old and spent he might be, but his built suggested that the man had presented quite an impressive silhouette once. The bear comparison waved hello again.

‘Mmexcuse me, my lady,’ he mumbled, suddenly losing all tension in his body and staggering backward. His eyes scanned his surroundings with a helpless expression, taking in Darcy and Jane, the parking lot, the desert.

‘Do you know where you are?’ Darcy asked carefully, a hand held out. This woman had once felled a guy in the desert for nothing more than falling from the sky and asking for a tool. Sometimes Jane wondered where she had failed her logics seminars.

‘Right, okay, I think you’d better come with us,’ Darcy said, pointing at the building behind them. ‘You can have breakfast, and then we try to find out where you’re at home, okay?’

At the last word, the man twitched, or maybe Jane had imagined it. Still, he let Darcy guide him over to the lab.

When Erik had stayed with them, he had slept in a small storage room next to the kitchen. His foldable bed was still there, pillow and duvet, and some of the spare clothes he had lent to… well.

‘There’s a bathroom here, if you want to clean yourself up a bit,’ Darcy said. She hadn’t been able to get the name of their guest, as he had simply stopped talking. Jane followed them at some steps’ distance, not letting their visitor out of sight.

Although he took in his surroundings keenly, the technojumble inside the lab did not seem to surprise him as much as the desert outside. His gait looked familiar, and although the mat of hair and dirt made it impossible to see much of his face, Jane was sure that she knew him. She hadn’t known that many people in Puente Antiguo, so finding out who the man was shouldn’t be that hard.

Darcy closed the door of the tiny bathroom behind her while Jane tried not to think of that one time another stranger they had found outside had cleaned himself up in there. At least this time Darcy would not have reason to stare.

It was Jane who did so.

‘Wow,’ Darcy said, ‘the miracles of soap and water. Care for a spot of breakfast, Sir?’

‘Darcy, that’s – that’s – O-‘

‘Old Barney!’ Darcy exclaimed. Jane shut her mouth, which had been wide open. She wasn’t keen on charging rent from flies. ‘Now you say it, I see it, too!’

Jane bit into her bagel. She’d have given five bagels for a decent croissant, and five Nobel prizes if someone could have told her not to get out of bed, not to look outside, and especially not to care about any stranger she encountered where ordinary strangers were impossible. What had she done to deserve this? What?

She watched the old man thoughtfully chew his breakfast, as if he had never camped outside on the pavement. Maybe he really did not remember. If this was a joke… if this was a _joke_ …

‘Right, he’s sleeping,’ Darcy announced after she had led their guest back to his new abode. Jane had remembered that her stomach ached with hunger and gulped down some food herself. ‘Sorry for interrupting you, but if he is who you say he is, it might be better not to remind him too soon. Whatever happened to him and dumped him here, it can’t be good to mingle.’ She let out a deep breath. ‘Never thought the king of the universe would look like Anthony Hopkins in R.E.D.2 though.’

Jane hadn’t seen that film. ‘I got dumped by his son, why do I still have to put up with his mishpocha?’ she complained.

‘Maybe the old guy wants to marry you, now you’re available again,’ Darcy smirked.

Jane threw the last bit of bagel at her.

‘Hey!’ Darcy said. ‘It’s not that unthinkable. I think they had such a storyline in those Avengers merchandise comic books.’ At the sight of Jane’s face, Darcy quickly added, ‘That reminds me, I should get in touch with Stark Industries’ PR department.’

When it came to Jane, she’d have recommended a dog’s signature in a pretty little gift bag.

‘What’s so difficult about leaving me in peace?’ Jane spat. ‘Just my peace and quiet! Is that so much to ask?’ She turned to the closed double doors behind which Darcy had deposed of “Old Barney”. ‘Is it too much to be taken seriously as a human being?’

‘Questions upon questions,’ Darcy gave back dryly. ‘And before you ask, he is a Barney. He doesn’t have it in him to be a Bill.’

Jane did not ask what Darcy meant. It was most likely a reference to the Discworld novels Darcy loved so much.

She did not think any further about how to call their unexpected visitor when a movement out on the street caught her eye. Motioning Darcy to stay put, Jane rose to her feet. ‘I’m dealing with this,’ she said.

‘You sure, boss?’ Darcy asked.

‘Believe me, I need this.’

The man who approached Smith Motors could just as well have written “SHIELD” all over his forehead in pink lipstick. His carefully chosen social worker outfit and the matching pickup had no place in a one-main-street place such as Puente Antiguo, there was a badly hidden bulge under his left armpit, and when he spoke, the fake accent declared him clearly East Coast. Jane scoffed. So they sent her the trainees now.

‘Morning, Ma’am,’ the man said in what he seemed to hope was a southern brawl, ‘Thompson my name. Cliff Thompson, streetworker.’

‘Morning to you, too, whatever your name is at SHIELD’s,’ Jane snarled back. ‘Coming to steal my stuff again? Your car’s a bit small for that.’

‘Oh. Uh… right.’ At least he caught himself rather quickly. ‘Now that’s out… I’m not here for any of your stuff.’ What a beginner. ‘But have you seen a man around here, Ma’am?’

‘In case that’s your way to ask if I’m dating anyone, I’m gonna report you to your CO. In case it isn’t – there was a guy sleeping over there last night.’ She pointed at the heap of rubble on the other side of the street that had housed an alien some hours before.

‘Did you recognise him?’

‘I know I have a reputation for being reckless, but honestly, I’m not stupid enough to walk up to any stranger stalking my house and have a good look at their face.’ Lying was hard, but telling the truth never hurt.

The man stared at her blankly. Jane made a mental not to complain at SHIELD’s for being so gravely underestimated, again. Those guys really thought her brain to be the size of a walnut, if that was the type of bother they sent her now.

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘Do you think I’m watching every move of some dude sleeping in the street?’ she snapped. Then she pointed down the main road, into the city. ‘That way.’

‘That way, right. Thank you very much, Ma’am.’

‘And a good day to you.’

Jane was about to shut the door and draw in a deep breath when –

‘Oh, wait! Uh – sorry, Ma’am,’ the man said, turning around on his heels again. ‘Would you mind if we searched the premises?’

‘ _Excuse me_?’ Jane shrieked, hopefully loud enough that they’d hear her at Isabel’s. ‘You come here, you have the nerve to actually _come here_ , to _me_ , after everything you and your little friends have to me, _now_ – and you dare suggest to sniff through my private property, _again_?’

‘It’s only for your safety, Ma’am, I can assure you, there is no –‘

There had been many moments in Jane’s life when she had hoped aliens would drop from the sky and give her the chance to sneak out of whatever bothered her. That today would be the day, well, horoscopes never prepared anyone for this sort of thing.

The man dropped to the ground when the spaceship appeared out of nowhere, rushing over their heads and disappearing behind the building where the noise indicated that it had landed on the sand. Another guy jumped up from the back of the pick-up where he had been hiding and ran over the parking lot, shouting something at his colleague who, after a little whimpering, heaved himself back onto his feet to follow.

Jane did not have to say a word. Darcy had already run to the double doors behind which the storage rooms lay. In a moment’s time they stood into Erik’s old room, grabbed their alien guest, and threw open the door to the side exit. Jane peeked out.

She had recognised the type of spaceship when it had flown over the house, black and slim as a blade, and the sight of the two masked figures jumping out of it confirmed that first impression: Darkelves.

Holding up a hand to Darcy, who had taken hold of the old man’s arm with her grip of steel, Jane watched how the SHIELD men immediately made friends with the aliens. By firing at them.

The Darkelves ran to the lab’s annex, which was the sign Jane had been waiting for. While the main building shielded them from view, she and Darcy hurried over to the spaceship and pushed their Old Barney up the access ramp. It closed behind them.

‘Okay, boss,’ Darcy said, her face glowing. ‘What now? You know how to fly this thing?’

‘Technically. I’ve seen how it’s done.’ Jane sighed. The sound of the machinery whirring up around them only allowed one conclusion. ‘But you better say hi to Mr Autopilot.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's still here, thanks so much for reading, and as always, I'd be thrilled to hear what you think about this story. Hopefully see you next time!


	4. Chapter 4

Darcy sighed. ‘Does anyone know a game?’

‘Tetris.’

‘Funny, boss.’

According to Jane’s phone, they had only spent twenty minutes in the spaceship so far. Still, with Earth no longer visible through the hull’s openings for the past seventeen minutes and no idea how long they would be stuck in here, things did not look weekend-trip-like.

‘You okay, gramps?’ Darcy asked… Barney. Not waking from the half-slumber that had taken hold of him immediately after start, he nodded and mumbled a friendly gibberish.

‘Cool, cool…’ Darcy patted him on the shoulder before she went the whole two steps over to where Jane stood, helplessly staring at the controls. If there was a way to stop the autopilot, she had not found it yet.

‘I don’t know if the time on my phone is correct,’ Jane said, ‘might be warped. But if these diagrams on the controls are anything to go by, and that darkness outside really is darkness, then we’re far outside the solar system already.’

‘Wouldn’t we travel through some kind of wormhole to make such a long distance?’

‘Maybe we did. But I think this thing really does go fast, and they’ve found ways to simulate gravity strong enough to keep us from noticing.’

‘Aw man, I wanna drive!’ Darcy grinned. Jane smiled back, fully aware that it looked much more feeble on her side. ‘Good news is though,’ Darcy continued, ‘not a morsel of food on board.’ They had both agreed that this would mean their trip had never been intended to last long. Either that, or the Darkelves were more badass than interested in health. A nagging little voice kept insisting that this was not so far from the impression Jane had gotten of those people.

‘I just hope it’s not too much for him,’ Jane nodded in direction of their fellow passenger. There was no need to lower her voice over the noise of the machines.

‘Sure he’s not faking it?’

‘No, but the odds that he does aren’t as high as the odds that he doesn’t,’ Jane said.

‘Spoken like a scientist.’

‘Thank you.’

She had thought about this question ever since she had had a moment to do so. With this man, technically everything was possible. But one had to be a very good actor to come across so genuine without overdoing it, and from the time she had met him as well as what she had heard, the old king’s mind might indeed have deteriorated at considerable speed. Jane did not know a lot about dementia and such things, so it was difficult to determine if the old man was merely sick, or if someone had meddled. If she had not been so sure that Loki wasn’t around any longer… but maybe she wasn’t sure. She had seen one of the brothers return from the dead, she really should not be sure.

‘I want Frigga back.’

She realised she had murmured the words aloud when the old man’s ears visibly twitched at the sound of the name. So much for not being overheard.

‘Boss, I don’t know about this Darkelf alphabet stuff, but I think something’s happening to the data here,’ Darcy interrupted her broodings, pointing at the spaceship’s control panels.

Jane snapped back to attention. The intern’s eye for details, even in extraterrestrial number, was unrivalled. ‘I think we’re slowing down!’

They both pushed themselves as close as possible to the windows, Darcy shoving Jane out of the way effectively before noticing what she had done – ‘Oops, sorry, boss’ – and finding another window.

‘Can you see anything?’

‘Yes, and I think you should see this, boss.’

Jane threw herself at the window Darcy quickly cleared.

‘That’s a joke.’

‘It better be.’

They approached what looked like an interstellar petrol station.

There wasn’t much to the construct. A large platform, scaffolding, the relicts of what might have been a steering engine once, but had since served as a free spare parts compound. On top, a small building brightly lit, surrounded by a handful of spaceships.

‘I always thought that sort of thing should be sphere-shaped, so more ships can dock in,’ Darcy said.

‘Call the architect, I’m sure they’ll love to hear your ideas.’

Darcy gave her an acerbic look, but simply continued: ‘There might be a lot of species in the universe who have lived their evolution in two dimensions only and, like us, are only beginning to think space as three-dimensional. This could be an early example of their free-space architecture.’

‘It looks old for sure.’ As if Mel Brooks movies aired on other planets, too. ‘Are you taking pictures?’

‘No, I’m pointing my phone at the windows completely randomly. Please stay with me, battery…’

‘You know you don’t have reception here? No instagram.’

Of all the not amused looks Darcy had ever given her, not many had actually made Jane’s forehead burn. This one did.

‘You know I’m writing a book!’ Darcy spat out, pounding her fist against the hull.

‘We’re landing.’

‘I’ve sacrificed my academic career for you, made sure you’d have food on your notebook at dinnertime, a clean roof over your head –‘

‘Listen, can we discuss your dissertation after we’ve dodged those Darkelves there?’

‘Dissertation? _Dissertation_?’

‘Darcy, we’ve –‘

‘It’s not a fucking dissertation, it’s a _goddamn book_ , how is that – waaaaaaah…’

The hatch had opened, sending Darcy, who had been leaning against it, tumbling out onto the platform. 

‘… landed.’

‘Oh my God, or whoever listens, thanks for oxygen!’ the intern huffed as she sat up on the space station’s parking deck and put some shape back into her hair before quickly turning to the Darkelves. The order of those actions did not surprise Jane, who had briefly dared to dip into Darcy’s religion of hair care. She had dipped out again once the topic had come to pouring food ingredients over one’s own head.

‘Pray for common sense while you’re at it!’ Jane snarled. She pushed the old guy the whole two feet off the hatch, where he was less of a target for the Darkelves, and threw herself over Darcy.

‘Personal space, boss!’

At least Jane couldn’t complain about not landing softly.

‘Come on, to the –‘

‘Remove your sorry sight from the surface of – of – this space station!’

Jane was quite sure to have translated that sentence correctly. But even if not, the Lady Sif’s voice left no doubt about her intentions.

‘Who’s _that_?’ Darcy asked, audibly impressed. ‘Wait, I know her –‘

‘Miss Universe. Now come on!’

Jane was on her feet before the Darkelves approaching from behind the building realised that they had two squishy humans in front of them, and that they might have met those two squishy humans on their little holiday trip to Earth some years ago. Maybe they took into consideration the ability of the Lady Sif though, for they lost no time engaging the newcomer in their unshared attention.

‘Darcy, move it!’

The intern finally made it to her feet, if only because Jane had pulled her up in one big heave. She might have failed to drag three hundred pounds of extraterrestrial superboyfriend across a meadow once, but that did not mean a Darcy of roughly her own size would impress Jane.

She managed to push Darcy behind the spaceship, for the open hatch gave no cover to the inside, only to discover that Barney had vanished.

‘And who gave _you_ permission to trespass?’ the old man exclaimed to a third Darkelf who had just appeared on their side. If Jane had needed proof as to why it had been a bad decision to leave bed this morning, here it was.

‘Stay!’ she ordered Darcy, who for once had frozen in shock and did not babble back. ‘Good Darcy.’

Glancing around the hull of the spaceship, Jane could see Sif engaged in enthusiastic fisticuffs with the first two Darkelves. The third stayed out of sight, but the old man had drawn a dagger from somewhere under his unidentifiable rags and circulated around the point where Mister Pointy Ears would be. Typical, lost his marbles, but not his bread knife.

Not in all these months since her relationship status in the tabloids had been reduced to single, Jane had regretted having chosen the path of science over becoming a brawny wrestling giant. Now, however, the thought did not sound that useless anymore. She had no idea how to help Old Barney except by registering him for meals on wheels, and even then the forms would have to be filled out by Darcy.

Reminded of Darcy, Jane decided to recycle her earlier tackle. If she sat down on the Darkelf, she could at least poke them with her butt bones, as a certain nosy intern always said.

She took shelter under the spaceship’s still open hatch, crawled to the other side, and checked the Darkelf’s position. Just a little to the right… crouch and –

A blast of rainbow-coloured lights saved Jane from becoming a Darkelf acupuncture device. Ungrateful that she was, she commented on the situation with a curse she had picked up where even three academic degrees could not provide appropriate vocabulary.

Sif had disposed of one of her suitors and ran over to them, which was all Jane could see before another whirlwind blew her back under the hatch. Hitting her head hard again, Jane skipped the swearing this time and tried to see what had happened.

More Darkelves had happened.

She crawled back, thinking quickly. How could she reach Darcy? She wouldn’t risk Darcy’s safety for that of the man who had started all this crap, and hereditarily so.

‘Darcy?’ Jane tried to peek underneath the spaceship, but she could not see if Darcy was still waiting on the back. When she saw black, toed boots, she very much hoped that Darcy was not there anymore.

The swear jar would make her poor today.

Checking the parking lot, Jane saw Sif and a tall, broad-shouldered man wield their swords against about a dozen Darkelves. She would have had to look twice to recognise her former boyfriend, and did not, because second looks were a luxury some people could not afford. Darcy, she had to find Darcy.

‘Release the fair maiden at once!’ she heard the old man’s voice. Oh dear.

Jane calculated where she expected the fair maiden to plot her release, then crawled back under the spaceship in the opposite direction. There.

Darcy must have been knocked out, or at least Jane hoped it was nothing more serious. One of the Darkelves held her while another threatened Old Barney to give up. They seemed to want him whole, which should be good news for Darcy, too. Positivity levels up!

If Jane managed to surprise the Darkelf in charge of Darcy, she might be able to free her intern, the old man might see his chance to… positivity had just turned into wishful thinking. Anyway, she had to get behind the scene –

More rainbow lights. The spaceship shielded her from seeing what was going on, but the command that roared over the whole parking area left no doubt:

‘Yield!’

Queen Frigga had never been a friend of unnecessary words, which left little doubt to whom the voice belonged. Jane could see more feet in iron boots, meaning reinforcements had arrived. She felt relief – and then saw that the Darkelf holding Darcy did not indeed yield, but strengthened his grip on the unconscious woman.

‘Let go of my intern!’ Jane roared before she noticed what she was doing. She jumped to her feet and ran at the imbecile, ignoring several arrows and the clatter of more metallic boots. But then the rainbow gush happened again, arsehole! Screaming with rage, Jane hit the ground. When she looked up, the old man had vanished, together with everyone else who couldn’t put baubles on their ears.

‘Fuck! Fuck you, fuck all of you!’ she shrieked. Darkelves were not likely to understand English, were they?

They definitely understood tone though, and that Jane couldn’t do any worse to them than bore them to death with a lecture about gravity. It would explain why they were forming a circle around her now. At least she could see Darcy lying on the ground unnoticed several steps away.

‘You know,’ Jane said, sitting up, ‘I almost like you. At least you’re all the same. You don’t promise friendship to a human and then leave them alone when they really, really need help.’

If they understood her, Jane never received an answer, for in this moment someone very fast, and very strong, knocked down two thirds of the elves and made the others jump out of the way. Jane felt herself picked up and, surprisingly gently, placed on a horse’s back in full run.

Flight. Not run.

The horse was flying, on large silver wings.

‘Darcy!’ Jane managed to say.

‘As you wish,’ she heard. The horse had already turned. Sitting in front of the rider and focussing on the ground, Jane could not see who was steering the animal, and she did not recognise the voice. It did not matter. A second later, Darcy was placed in front of Jane, who slung her arms around the woman in high hopes that Darcy’s ribs could take the pressure of Jane’s despaired relief.

She even forgot to enjoy her Einstein-Rosen-Bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best thing about writing these is the dynamic between the characters of Jane and Darcy. They can't be separated, really, but once united, you can lean back and let them do all the writing work.
> 
> It's all the more painful to see all those comments going "I like Darcy, but Jane is so useless" - not even diving into the metric ton of misogyny here (calling a brilliant female scientist with strong autist rendering useless, but demanding a more diverse cast at the same time - uh-huh), just a couple words:
> 
> You make Darcy cry.  
> And then you make her angry.
> 
>  
> 
> Flying horses and who knows what else (okay, I do) in the next chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

Little Feather was not a steed bred for carrying great loads, but two human women this tiny hardly made her slow her steps. The wings of silver, in graceful contrast to the horse’s otherwise entirely black coat, flowed through Earth’s atmosphere steadily, speaking for air’s density and the planet’s gravity to accommodate the horse’s habits. She covered the distance between where the Rainbow had released them and the designated rendezvous point in three wing beats, and only because the currents were a little inconsistent over the village in the middle of the desert.

As the horse would find the way without her, Valkyrie focussed on her passengers. The very pale one had worried her, but the woman had woken up and seemed conscious enough. Her pallor was unusual, but might be natural – one never knew with other species. It could be the contrast to the mahogany shade of hair. The other one, of very light brown skin and slightly darker brown hair with golden shimmers, looked much more frail in built, but too sharp to let her body skip duty. Her iron grip might be the reason if the other woman could not breathe.

Wings and hooves had no natural connection, but after centuries of careful practice, Little Feather landed as gracefully as if she were the product of millions of millennia of evolution. Valkyrie glided out of the saddle, careful not to lean on the humans, and then lifted the formerly unconscious woman – Darcy was her name, was it not – to the ground. The poor human was still shaky, but as the other one jumped off the saddle without help, Valkyrie had both hands free to steady the patient.

‘I’m okay, thanks,’ the Darcy human said in what Valkyrie recognised as the language called English.

‘That way,’ the other woman said, marching in front to show the way. They approached a round building almost entirely made of glass, with a long pole on the roof to which several letter signs had been attached. Valkyrie could not read them, she had only learnt the spoken language. The alphabet did not look complicated enough to catch her attention though.

In her long years of service, she had not met a lot of humans. They were considered too short-lived to come up with anything interesting. Now Valkyrie began to wonder if that had been a wrong impression, what with Darcy insisting to walk and the other woman not granting the assembled nobles more than half a sideway glance as she unlocked the front door. Every creature of another species in this nebula would at least have shown some sign of impression at the sight of Queen Frigga, the Lady Sif, and Prince Thor waiting patiently on a piece of land that had completed half of its journey to becoming ruins.

The woman cleared some rubble from a small sofa, onto which Valkyrie lowered her precious cargo carefully. In one smooth move, the warrior stepped back and bowed to the queen, who had walked into the building.

If the nameless human had seemed to be ignorant of her visitors’ ranks, that notion was proven wrong as she, after having checked on Darcy, straightened up, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and stared at the queen. Valkyrie had no words to describe that stare. She was sure that nobody, not even the two princes during those difficult years around age five hundred, had ever given Queen Frigga that look.

‘I am most grateful for your services to save my husband,’ the queen said. That sentence was probably a first in history, too.

The woman just kept staring.

Too much for the queen. ‘Although I could as well hold you responsible for bringing him to the Darkelves, if you prefer that, Jane Foster.’

‘ _Doctor_ Jane Foster.’

Valkyrie had enough training to keep her poise, but her interest had been triggered. So this was the human who had carried an Infinity Gem.

‘Your titles –‘

The rainbow maelstrom on the square outside interrupted the queen. It made Prince Thor jump aside, whilst Little Feather calmly kept nibbling the dry weeds that had triumphed over the concrete ground.

At the sight of the king and several of his soldiers pushing a chained-up Prince Loki over the square, the queen seemed to have forgotten her speech. Her face said enough: members of her family believed to be dead, who then turned out quite well and alive, would not be much of a surprise for a while longer.

If the Jane human had felt surprise, she did not show it either. Without changing her pose or expression, she stepped in front of the sofa, as if to shield the Darcy human with her tiny back. Valkyrie looked back at her queen, awaiting an order.

‘I have caught him,’ the king proclaimed as he walked into the building.

‘And would you care to tell me why you would bring him here?’ Queen Frigga asked. Her voice had contained ice ever since the day of her hiding, but now it would have made a Jotun shiver.

His majesty seemed bewildered for a moment. ‘I thought my wife… the queen…’

‘I am here,’ the queen said, a little warmer.

‘His memory has been fuddled with,’ the voice of Darcy could be heard. ‘Your son would know. We have a friend who’s still not over what he’s done to him.’

‘He is over that,’ Jane growled, but nobody paid her any attention.

‘Ah, the chivalrous lady!’ the king proclaimed. ‘I am glad to see you well. Those Darkelves had no right to frighten a lady of such beauty.’

Darcy glanced at the queen. ‘Dude, your wife’s here.’

‘Come to speak of wives,’ he said, eyeing Darcy, ‘a king cannot be without queen, and I am a widower. That one will do well, I should say. What do you say, Frigga?’

The mask on the queen’s face made a reply unnecessary. Valkyrie made sure her own heart did not drop too low. A king should not be this weak. He must not be.

‘We are still married, husband.’

A wave of confusion swept over the king’s face. An old face, granted. There had been reasons as to why the crown prince had been required to receive the throne all those years ago, hadn’t there?

‘But my wife… she died…’

‘Do you not remember our scheme? That I would pretend to be dead, to work in hiding, to feign a weakness to the Darkelves?’

He stopped, his mouth a little opened, thoughts lost. But then a hint of the old king returned, or so Valkyrie thought, until she heard the words:

‘Either way, I have decided. I shall marry that wrench, she looks –‘

‘Fucking no!’ the Jane woman shouted, making Valkyrie twitch for the grip of her sword.

‘Legally not happening,’ the Darcy said. Her demeanour could not have been calmer. ‘Sorry, your highness, but you _are_ married, and to a splendid wife, if I may say so.’ She sat up. ‘But if you need an heir who’s not a spoilt millennial – literally – and doesn’t belong into a dungeon with the key thrown away, you can adopt me.’

Now the queen’s mask slipped. ‘What?’

‘As you so nicely suggested this marriage,’ Darcy continued, ‘I’m sure your healers have methods to turn humans into something more long-lived, am I right?’

She hardly saw the move, but Valkyrie was sure that the Jane human had just broken the screwdriver she had picked up from one of the tables. Oh right, her relationship to one of the princes. Valkyrie resisted the urge to shake her head.

‘That sounds reasonable,’ the king nodded. ‘A sound suggestion. What do you say, Frigga? Did you not always want a daughter?’

Valkyrie would have liked to help her queen, but she could not. What the king decided was a decision. So long as he was king…

‘Darcy, you need to see a doctor,’ the Jane woman managed to hiss.

‘Never been clearer.’

Somehow, Valkyrie believed this to be true.

* * *

Jane had to bite her own teeth in order not to shout. A commotion from outside took the urge to reply from her. ‘There, that’s your potential future brothers by the way. Don’t you want to say hi?’ she said instead.

Darcy lifted her perfect, classy, shamelessly regal nose. ‘No, I’m gonna be reasonable and stay here in my seat.’

‘Okay.’ Jane looked from Darcy at the queen, then back at Darcy, then at the woman who had saved them both. No help from that corner this time. ‘Okay. I’m calling an ambulance. You’ve hurt your head, you need a check-up.’

‘Why don’t you go outside and catch some fresh air? Make sure those two don’t ruin the front garden any more?’

There was little chance of that, what with Loki in chains and Thor yelling at him. It was not even real yelling, or no window in the circumference of a mile or so would have stayed whole. Jane had accidental experimental data on that sort of incident.

‘Shut up,’ she growled as she stepped out into the – surprise, surprise – sunshine. How she longed for some rain once in a while, or a nice decent thunderstorm… maybe that not so much. Snow. Snow would be nice.

At the sight of her, Thor straightened up, and she could not help the impression that Loki tried to do the same. Well, he would always look like a stray next to the huge Golden Retriever that his brother was. Jane considered throwing a stick to find out if her theory – that it would be brought back to her – was correct. If she was wrong, she’d at least be rid of the two.

‘Jane –‘

‘What have you done with your hair?’ she blurted out. His shaggy mane had been shortened carpet style. There were lines running through it, but she could tell they were not scars, just someone feeling creative with the shaver. In composition with the cheap leather gladiator costume he wore, it looked ridiculous. ‘You look ridiculous.’

‘Uh – well. I was… in hiding.’

‘Is that why you didn’t bring your fave building tool?’

She seemed to have hit a nerve there. Thor swallowed, cast a gaze at Loki, then to the ground.

‘It has disappeared.’

‘Knew it!’ Loki shouted, a grin spreading all over his face, and then beyond those cheekbones and into infinity. Not even the prospect of calculating the formula of those lines could lift Jane’s mood. She was all over exponential graphs, usually.

‘Did you do that to your father?’ she barked instead.

‘Not my father.’

‘Why do I even bother asking, of course you did. Faked your death to claim the throne? Nah, don’t say anything, it’s boring. If I wanted to know how you did it, I’d ask your mother.’

To Thor’s visible surprise, Loki did as he had been told. Jane did not bother, she had more urgent matters at hand. There was a winged horse in her yard. A winged alien horse that could actually fly.

‘Hello you, how are you doing?’ she said to the beast. The steed – that much was obvious – did as all horses did, carefully sniffing Jane’s hand and then ignore her. The shrubs Jane had watched withering around the lab for several months presented a much more interesting snack than the tiny human.

The best relationship to an animal one could have was when the beasts ignored you, that much Jane knew. She stepped closer to the horse, its shoulder on Jane’s line of height, and slowly stroked the fantastically soft fur. That way she did not have to look at anyone humanoid.

‘I, I am sorry,’ she heard him say.

Arsehole.

‘Oh yes, you’re sorry?’ she spat, spinning around. One should not do that standing next to a flight animal (literally) of unknown panic behaviour, Jane remembered too late. Fortunately the horse was a pro. She decided to lean against it.

‘I should not have left you like… I did.’

‘You shouldn’t – you shouldn’t – I don’t even know what you did!’ One shouldn’t shout standing so close to a horse either. ‘You just went away. No – you were gone.’

‘I said –‘

‘I just came back from the other side of the world!’ she screamed. Who cared about the neighbours? If not even a horse bothered about her feelings, she couldn’t bother about anyone else’s. ‘I’d been on planes for two days, I was jet-lagged, I hadn’t slept, I was sick from the food and the noise and – I couldn’t hear you! Okay?’

‘That was what I said,’ he said calmly. ‘That you did not listen.’ He had the nerve to say that calmly.

‘Oh great, what a reason to leave someone!’ Jane gave back. ‘You know what? Had you had any problem with me being a scientist, you should never even have flirted with me! Though I think you just wanted a place to stay, ‘cause you were really quick out the door whenever your Avengers pals called!’

‘We save the world together!’

‘On Toni Stark’s personal minigolf course? Darcy called his girlfriend. Well, before they split up, too. Did you have a bet about who could find less of a reason?’

She had never found so many of the right words before. It would have been magnificent, if things hadn’t been so absolutely, tremendously disastrous.

‘Jane, have you thought about how I felt? What I went through?’

‘Hairdressing appointment at a lawnmower seller’s?’ was what she wanted to say, but could stop herself in time. Instead she growled: ‘What _you_ felt? _You_? Every time I made extra time, you weren’t there. Out with your friends, every time, and _not_ always saving the world, you know I keep checking the news. And then I checked the tabloids. Imagine how that made me feel!’

‘A little proud?’ he asked with a cheeky grin.

Enough was enough. ‘No. Shitty!’

It did not matter that her hand would smell disgusting for the next two days. The ball of horse dung hit Thor directly in the face, where it belonged. Horses were great.

Jane did not care that Loki’s laughter could be heard through three solar systems, or that the doors to her lab would open that moment, revealing the scene to the be-dropped prince’s parents.

What mattered was that shit had been repaid. If not in quantity, then in gravity.

She knew about gravity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That old _All Aliens Speak English_ trope...
> 
> For those who are a little confused about the speed of the narrative so far, things will calm down a little from next chapter onwards, with reflections of what has been going on. Give poor Jane a moment to collect her thoughts! :)


	6. Chapter 6

‘Do you understand any of what’s happened?’ Jane asked. She sat in her former lab, trying to ignore the dust on the table in front of her, with a cup in her hand that might have been warm once. She had no idea what it had contained, but was quite sure that it was now inside her. No barley gruel, she hoped.

‘I believe I do. Would you like a summary?’ the warrior said.

‘Uh – I’m sorry,’ Jane stammered, remembering what she had been taught about etiquette. Well, half of it. A quarter. From a British drama Darcy had insisted to binge-watch last spring. ‘I’m not sure if I offered anything to you… sorry, I don’t think I caught your name, either, Lady…’

‘Valkyrie,’ the woman said.

‘That’s a name?’ Jane blurted out. ‘I thought it was a title.’

‘It is.’

Where was Darcy when she was needed? At a loss what to say, Jane kept it at staring. She had thought to be immune to all that alien sparkle by now, what with having been the First Girlfriend for a handful of months, but this woman kept drawing in her gaze like a planet of great mass drew in everything… of lesser mass.

Poetry was not Jane’s forte, but even she could see the perfection of the warrior’s face, her classic features, the glow of her complexion like that of the beautiful stone in the necklace Jane’s mother always wore, a family heirloom she had said, a sard… the lights in the woman’s lacquer-smooth hair like sparks in the endless fascination of a deep-sea abyss, everything from blue to silver and even gold… those strong muscles of an entirely relaxed, artfully proportioned body… and a gaze so sharp, it seemed to grasp, ponder, and take in, all of the world at once. All of a sudden Jane wondered if that had not actually been something stronger in her cup. She had certainly never seen clearer.

Jane was about to ask her guest if she had been to ancient Greece, because they would certainly have built a cult around her, before she remembered her mother’s remarks about the misogyny in those days, and certainly a good deal of racism, too. Being proud of humanity would just never become an option.

‘Remind me to never introduce you to my mother, or she’ll never let you stop modelling for her.’

She gasped. Checked her mouth. Had she just said that? ‘I mean,’ Jane quickly added, ‘you really look – you look great.’

‘Thank you,’ the warrior nodded. ‘But if you have some change of clothes I may borrow, I would not stand out so much in human society.’

‘Yes,’ Jane nodded, glad to have something for her brain to do. ‘Clothes, you’re right. Let’s see… mine won’t fit, but I could… no, I threw those away… Darcy took her keys, and you’re taller than her…’

They found some trousers, a sweatshirt, and a pair of trainers that would work until they made it to the thrift shop. The lack of gold and bronze did not diminish the impressiveness of the woman’s appearance, which made Jane muse that it was not so much her physique that shone, but her very self. It was a good thing that she did not have to drive.

‘I’m afraid this is just a second hand store,’ she explained to her guest as they entered the shop, ‘there aren’t any other places for clothes in town. This is good value though, I got a lot of my stuff here when Darcy and I moved in. Is there anything you like in particular… sorry, don’t you have a nickname?’

The woman shrugged. ‘You tend to shorten names, don’t you? Call me Val then.’

‘Val? You sure?’ Jane frowned over a stack of plaid shirts.

Fortunately a lot of women in town were taller than Jane, and a lot of them had given away clothes to the shop. They found a range of jeans, shirts, and all the other necessities which, as the warrior tried them on, turned those unloved pieces of cloth into style. She had a way to shape whatever touched her, this woman.

‘Are you sure this was not too much of a financial effort?’ her guest asked Jane as they made their way to Isabel’s, two big paper bags filled with their treasures.

For the first time this morning, Jane felt a smile on her face. Of the handful of aliens she had met, not a single one had ever worried about being a monetary burden. ‘All that stuff cost less than a lunch. So don’t worry.’

‘I hope that you mean to illustrate the low price of clothes, and not the high prices for food,’ the warrior said, eyeing the diner that had popped up in front of them.

Jane laughed. ‘Well, not in this town. Izzy makes sure we all get a nourishing meal, and the odd vitamin. And I said don’t worry. Darcy wouldn’t have suggested you stay here if there were any difficulties.’

The warrior seemed to accept this argument as convincing, for she gave a sharp nod and stepped forward, being so kind as to slow her gait again when she noticed Jane’s little run to catch up.

They had a quick lunch in relative silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of the other customers in store beating themselves so as not to stare at the new sun in their midst, or maybe trying to remember where they had stored their blood pressure medication. Izzy ruled over everything with her stern, if benevolent gaze, not asking for her new customer’s name, but certainly already knowing everything there was to know.

Not able to refuse Izzy as she offered the cheesecake like the blessing of the house, and very quickly overwhelmed by that mountain of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates staring up from her plate, Jane found herself saved once more by her guest as she – Val – offered her help. On their way back to the laboratory, Jane thanked her for the gesture.

‘My pleasure,’ the warrior said with a little wink, ‘I did vow to protect you, come what may.’

‘Yeah… you have odd job contracts, where you come from.’

‘It is not a contract per se…’

‘Sorry, I’m hopeless at jokes.’

Instead of approaching the lab, where Val had promptly moved into what had once been Erik’s abode, Jane headed for her trailer. Halfway through the door, she turned – Val had taken position left of the entrance, staring out, like a guard in a certain golden palace in outer space Jane had very much tried to forget, thank you very much. The sight brought back too many memories of having been deposed in a walk-in closet for a night once.

‘Uhm – don’t you want to come inside?’

The warrior glanced at the interior, then, with a teasing little smile around the corner of her mouth, she asked: ‘Will I fit?’

‘You look flexible,’ Jane shrugged.

‘Well-spotted.’

The trailer with its bed, a bathroom, and even a kitchen and eating area, had always seemed just big enough for Jane. But she had already seen it shrink to matchstick box size once an alien tried not to hit their head at the ceiling, and the same happened now that Val stooped through the narrow door. She would not have been a practical deity though if she had not found an elegant solution and draped herself over one of the kitchen benches all in one graceful move.

‘Tea?’ Jane asked.

‘Meaning…?’

‘Ah. Sorry. A drink made of hot water in which you steep herbs or dried fruit, so the water takes on the flavour.’

Val had insisted on water in the diner, and Jane had not had the heart to recommend coffee.

‘A potion,’ the warrior nodded.

‘Just a drink.’ Jane filled the kettle. ‘But there’s several types that are said to be healthy. Green tea… herbal tea… I used to drink a lot of herbal tea when I was a kid because my mother didn’t want me to drink pre-processed juices, too much sugar and what not. I still don’t like juice… anyway… black tea is considered very classy. It’s offered to guests. So is green tea, but not so many people like it because it’s more bitter… sorry, didn’t want to lecture,’ she quickly finished.

‘This tea is…’ The warrior glanced at the teabags. ‘Blue?’

Jane looked at the label. ‘Oh, no, sorry. Camomile. Not very fancy, I’m afraid, but very healthy and okay for all kinds of people and… I need to go grocery shopping.’

‘I am curious to taste this,’ the goddess in Jane’s kitchen smiled divinely. Jane’s face turned hot in embarrassment. Receiving guests should be something taught in school.

‘So,’ she tried once they sat facing each other, the space in the nook so crammed that the tea mugs clouded the entire front window with their steam. ‘What’s this thing about no personal names?’

Granted, now that Jane thought back, she had only ever met aristocrats from the warrior’s society. Darcy would be so much better in this…

‘My name is Valkyrie,’ the woman shrugged. ‘For a soldier, that is enough.’

‘And when you’re not a soldier?’ Jane tried.

Her opposite only gave her a questioning glance. Stupid question.

‘Is it okay if I call you Val then?’ Jane tried instead. ‘I mean, I don’t want to get you into trouble…’

‘Well, it is not custom to adopt a nickname, or an altogether new name,’ the warrior said with what Jane believed to be a small grin, ‘but it should be acceptable. We are instructed to blend into other cultures where required.’

‘Names are definitely required,’ Jane nodded. The thought of a culture denying its members the right to bear a personal name made her shiver, and not because Jane would grant herself the illusion that humans were any different.

‘Are you still confused?’ the warrior interrupted her thoughts.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘This morning, you said you did not understand what had happened.’

‘Don’t worry, that’s a standard thing for me.’

The goddess cocked her head. ‘Would you like me to explain then?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Hold on.’ Jane fished her phone out of her pocket, checked the screen, then put the device away again. ‘Sorry. Just had to make sure nobody’s listening in. SHIELD hasn’t shown up to say hi to you yet, which means they’re trying to be present in other ways. Darcy’s left them this.’

The warrior merely nodded, not impressed by the techno-talk at all. ‘In that case, I can tell you now that what you witnessed on Jakris275 was a rescue mission. For the prince.’

Jane scoffed. ‘Did he get himself into trouble again, and you had to get him out?’

An unexpected, almost knowing smile began to spread over the warrior’s face. It brightened Jane’s whole vision. ‘Of course I got him out.’

‘Oh, I didn’t doubt that.’ Jane stared into her mug. Where had her tea gone? ‘Did you shear him, too?’

At this Val broke into laughter, a melodic sound, neither too loud nor too quiet. ‘No, why would I bother?’

She then told Jane how she had worked in secret for the queen, first assisting her in tracking the lost king, then being sent off on her own for the mission of retrieving the wayward prince, who apparently had been side-tracked on a find-yourself roadtrip, and had himself locked up in some sort of intergalactic gladiator pit. Once Valkyrie had freed him, she and Frigga had taken up the king’s trace again, where they had bumped into Darcy and Jane.

‘Sorry about messing that up,’ Jane managed to say.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That thing on jacket257… whatever it’s called. I pushed Darcy and your king into that spaceship and it went there on autopilot. If it hadn’t been for me –‘

‘The chances of his death would have been much higher. But you and your friend expertly saved him. You could not know that we were tracking you, but you have a natural instinct for doing what is best either way.’

Jane stared at her hands. ‘I’d call it dumb luck.’

‘What are the odds of that much luck?’ Jane looked up. The warrior stared at her with a gaze drilling into her brain.

‘Mathematically?’

‘If you want so.’ Valkyrie placed her mug on the table with easy care. No smashing on the ground. Had she been trained on how to behave on Earth, or was this a general thing of hers when on other planets? ‘But I can tell you that no soldier would ever bother blaming themselves for being guilty of success.’

‘Is this something you have learnt, or something you have observed?’

The goddess left it at a tiny wiggling of her head, her expression a locked door again.

Jane took a deep breath. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what to do now.’ Darcy would know. Darcy always knew. Darcy was gone. ‘I, I’m afraid I miss Darcy.’

‘Is she your sister? Or are you…’

‘She works for me. But we’re also friends. I think.’ Tea. She should make fresh tea. ‘Sorry, I really don’t know what to do around here. There’s nothing exciting really, not even a movie place. Maybe we should find a stable for your horse…’

‘Little Feather is fine. She is trained to take care of herself.’

‘You sure? People here would do a whole lot for a winged horse.’

‘So would people elsewhere.’ Val’s smile was not without pride now.

‘Okay,’ Jane said, feeling a little better. ‘You could take a walk if you want. Get to know the place.’

‘I have orders to stay with you.’

Oh great. Now Jane’s couch potatoism would bore another person. ‘Okay. Uhm… I haven’t set up any work, and I didn’t have any plans for today anyway, so… maybe we could watch a movie. They have some at the library, I think. Hope they’re open.’

‘A library?’

The sudden flash in the warrior’s eyes made Jane flinch.

‘Uhm. Yes? Not as cool as yours, there’s no holograms or anything, they have two computers and a handful of second-hand donated books, nothing much. It’s a small city.’

‘And everyone can go there?’

‘Yes.’ Jane frowned. ‘Can’t you?’

For the first time since they had met, Valkyrie seemed unsure what to say. Jane hastily pulled the mugs together, for once glad about the confined space inside the trailer, or she might accidentally have thrown the things against a wall. ‘Okay, we can have a look at the library. Get some input on names, if you want.’

Valkyrie nodded, still silent.

‘Hey, are you okay?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you feeling alright?’

‘Why should I not?’

Jane found out once they reached the library.

It was a small building, just one floor, crammed with books published decades ago and technology that had needed an update for even longer. For a second Jane considered donating some of the IT stuff she did not need anymore. Then she saw Valkyrie’s face.

The warrior, blocking the whole doorframe, had stopped in mid-step. Her eyes had gone wide, her mouth a little open in astonishment.

‘Do humans realise how rich they are?’ she asked quietly, so only Jane could hear.

Trying to ignore the pangs of guilt washing through her at this statement, and failing splendidly, Jane replied, ‘No. Most of us don’t.’

Valkyrie stepped into the room, her gaze a-sparkle with plans. ‘Well. I do.’

Jane felt her smile spread all over her face. Hope was back.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Val asked, ignoring Ms Hicks, the volunteer librarian, who was eyeing the Disturbers of Silence from her counter. ‘Will you assist me in saving the universe, or no?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks so much for reading, I hope you liked this chapter. Would love to hear your thoughts!


	7. Chapter 7

Darcy, in company of a truly majestic handbag, returned precisely three of Earth’s days after her departure. Valkyrie no longer put ‘Lady’ in front of Darcy’s name, not after a stern word from Jane about the meaning of titles on Earth, followed by a phone call of Jane’s mother during which Jane had handed Valkyrie the phone to hear the same lecture with much sharper arguments, followed by a story (delivered by Jane again) that nobody who had ever seen Darcy eat gherkins out of the jar without using her hands would still call her a lady.

Despite the woman’s future status as princess, her arrival on the parking space happened relatively unnoticed. Valkyrie was sure to receive sanctions for her lack of attention later on, but even so, she had no choice. Finding a name was _difficult_.

‘What are you two up to?’ Darcy said as she pushed open the lab’s front doors. They had kept them closed because Lady Isabela’s ears could do with a little suspense, as Jane had remarked.

‘Finding a name,’ Jane said before Valkyrie could.

‘And you had to mess up my good pin board for that?’

‘A name for Valkyrie.’

‘Oh!’

Darcy strode to where they stood, pushed Jane aside, whom Valkyrie quickly caught, and inspected the work on display, largely consisting of small pieces of cardboard attached to a large wooden board with the help of tiny needles. Apparently Jane had not exaggerated the importance of names on Earth. The more you knew about humans…

‘Violet? _Really_?’ Darcy tutted.

Valkyrie felt the urge to shrug. ‘We found the rule that plant names are appropriate, and have been in fashion for several centuries.’

‘Precisely. A century to you is about a decade down here. It meant bye-bye to shoulder pads quickly enough, but Super Nintendo… so tragic.’

She chose to ignore that statement.

‘So,’ Jane interrupted once she had found her standing again. ‘Is it _your highness_ yet, or can I still call you intern, make coffee?’

‘Darcy will do.’

‘Darcy, make coffee.’

Distracted from the pin board, Darcy turned to squint at Jane. ‘That’s not my last name.’

‘It’s your very own fault for programming the coffee machine in ways that make it inoperable to anybody else.

‘I just wanted it to let me play solitaire…’ Darcy mumbled, but trotted off toward the kitchen either way.

‘Just so you know,’ Jane called after her, ‘if you become space princess, I’m gonna keep you as my intern indefinitely. To keep you grounded.’

‘Thanks, boss.’

‘That’s not for the universe’s sake, I just want coffee.’

‘Will do, boss.’

Valkyrie had finally tried the drink, at Lady Isabela’s request. She understood the sentiment.

Minutes later, they all sat around the kitchen table Jane had cleared in a helter-skelter cleaning spell two days ago. She had insisted on Valkyrie sleeping in while Jane made the kitchen presentable. Valkyrie had not said no, and instead secretly taken up guarding position. That way they could both feel true to their duties.

‘You’re gonna become a princess then?’ Jane finally asked when they all sat around the small kitchen table, hot coffee in front of them. Valkyrie preferred Lady Isabela’s brew.

‘Yup,’ Darcy nodded. ‘Shouldn’t have been so simple, really. One second I make a joke about getting adopted, next second, I am. That’s what you get when you completely ignore mental health in your entire culture. The man shouldn’t be eligible to make any political decisions anymore, but you know what happened yesterday? The whole royal guard had to sing along to my ringtone!’

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t make them do that.’

‘Maybe I did.’

Valkyrie tried to sip her coffee very slowly, to make it last, and very quietly. She was not quite sure what to make of these news. Certainly, one day Queen Frigga would have retired…

‘But – don’t you have parents?’ Jane asked.

‘Of course I do. Everyone has. Sorry,’ Darcy added to Valkyrie. ‘I mean, biological parents.’

At Jane’s questioning glance, Valkyrie said, ‘We soldiers are raised in the palace.’

‘I’ve added it to my list of _things_ ,’ Darcy snarled. ‘It’s quite a bit more ugly than it sounds.’

‘You’re serious about this then?

Darcy exhaled audibly. ‘For the third time, yes!’

‘But – why?’

‘Jane Foster.’ Darcy sat up very straight. ‘Where I come from, there’s fifteen people sharing a house. I have six sisters and brothers. I’m the fourth, that’s the sandwich’s sandwich, in case you don’t want to calculate that. I’ve never had new clothes, I was always last getting the cereals so only the crumbs were left, and when I went to college, people didn’t notice until two weeks later the potted plants on second floor had died, because it was my chore to water them. Honestly, my mom’s not gonna mind if I vanish from the planet. Whenever she’s gonna notice.’

Valkyrie wished she would have been back at guarding duty. Everything was so much simpler when the only three things ever happening were people trying to come in, people trying to go out, and the occasional bird answering the call of nature.

‘I didn’t know you had sisters and brothers,’ Jane said quietly.

‘Because you never ask. And not just any sisters and brothers, but two pairs of twins, too. A world-famous pianist, a Quidditch captain, a student of medicine who’s about to cure cancer – honestly, becoming queen of the universe is just gonna make me number three on the Lewis popularity ranking. My sister wins the Spelling Gnu every time…’

‘What, _that_ Lewis is your sister?’

‘Yup.’

‘She’s brilliant!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘She knows, like, every word!’

‘Yeah… I can never tell if it’s she or her twin solving all those crossword puzzles before I can get them…’ Darcy mumbled.

‘No! Way!’

‘Forgive me if this sounds insolent – maybe it is…’ Valkyrie tried. She wanted to bite her tongue, but when it came to physical pain, her head chose self-protection. Speaking when it was not wise, not so much.

‘Just ask. Please, do ask,’ Darcy said. It almost sounded tired.

‘Very well.’ Her voice at its usual strength, product of centuries of training, Valkyrie said, ‘The position of being queen is not one without difficulties. For a stranger from another world, these difficulties would…’

‘I know what I’m facing. Or I know how much I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how much exactly, but I know that I don’t know so much, I’d never know. Something like that,’ Darcy growled. ‘Sorry, jetlag, twenty-eight-hours days – but you’re right.’

She reached into the handbag she had placed next to her chair, pulling out a handful of notebooks as well as a small computer, one of those outdated things they still used on Earth. ‘Like any student before an exam, I’ve tried to prepare. And I haven’t prepared for the last three days, but for the last _years_. Ever since our first golden boy came down from space, I wanted to know how your world works, and why, and what’s to be improved. Because if it were easy, you wouldn’t already have lost a crown prince because he got the flutters, and another prince to unrealistic expectations to his position.’

Valkyrie snorted. ‘Nice summary.’ She hesitated for a moment. Was this another moment she should have bitten her tongue? ‘So you have been and are preparing for the role of queen?’ she finally asked.

‘So long as nobody realises that this is one of those strange dreams you sometimes have right before you wake up…’ Darcy said with an odd, lopsided grin.

Jane rolled her eyes. ‘I hate those, so annoying.’

‘Well,’ Valkyrie said, not in the mood for being interrupted. ‘If you want, we can talk those through.’ She pointed at Darcy’s notes. _Talking through_ was an expression she had learnt from Jane in the last days. Not the letters of the English alphabet, those she had learnt from the menu during their first diner visit while Jane had introduced her to Lady Isabela.

‘You mean, you know about these things?’ Jane asked. ‘Ruling and all?’

‘Because I keep mentioning that I am a soldier?’ Valkyrie said. She saw the woman tense up a little at the coolness of her voice. ‘Even a soldier would know the workings of their kingdom, would you not say? Especially the secret confidante of Her Majesty.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said, ‘that was stupid of me.’

‘You’d do that?’ Darcy asked, eyes wide and shining with starlight, entirely ignoring the drama in front of her. Apparently choosing her for royalty had not been such a blind guess after all. ‘You’d prep me for this?’

‘I am not a royal advisor, mind you,’ Valkyrie said, ‘but I can probably teach you things they cannot. Including some self-defence. That they certainly cannot teach you.’

Darcy rolled her eyes. ‘I knew there’d be sports involved.’ She noticed the expression on Valkyrie’s face. ‘Just kidding, I’m thrilled! You’re the best!’

Jane was quick enough to rescue two coffee cups plus Darcy’s ridiculous handbag computer as the princess-to-be hauled herself over the table to hug Valkyrie. Her instincts screaming at her to retreat to higher ground, or just any ground away from the scene, the latter did as she had learnt during particularly unpleasant pieces of drill: stiff upper lip, impeccable poise. It worked this time, for what Darcy had probably intended to be a bone-crushing hugging experience did not feel like more than a stroke with Little Feather’s wings. Well, when the steed was relaxed. When she actually flapped her wings, those things could knock out bilgesnipe.

‘Can we start right now?’ Darcy asked quickly once she had sat back on her chair, shivering with excitement.

‘Hold on.’ Valkyrie saw the giddiness trickle out of the woman’s face, and some part of her enjoyed it, just a little. ‘This is no little deed, and giving it away freely would lessen its worth.’

Darcy’s eyes narrowed, but at the same time, a sly smile crept over her face. ‘You’re not wrong there. What do you want in return?’

‘Help. In finding a name. And the guarantee that I’ll be allowed to keep and carry this name once I have decided, on this world as well as any other.’

‘Deal.’ Darcy leant back. ‘Honestly though? You’re selling too cheap. I was gonna decree the common right for personal names anyway once I’m in office.’

‘I am not a merchant,’ Valkyrie shrugged. Valkyrie. Not much longer, after all. ‘And I have not found a single suitable name yet.’

‘You’ll have to fill me in on the detail of your work so far,’ Darcy said, ‘but maybe this will help.’ Once again, she reached into her handbag, pulling out yet another note. It looked much older than the other ones, and strangely colourful. How many books did the woman carry around with her all day? The bag must look like a portable library inside. Valkyrie’s jaws clenched. She wanted a portable library. The thought was tucked away safely with her other book-related ideas.

‘I’ve wanted to change my name ever since I could say “ridiculous”, but now I can’t do that anymore because I have to keep up links to Earth,’ Darcy said, extracting a slip of paper of lavender colour, no less, from the book’s pages. ‘This is a list of the best names I’ve ever encountered since I’ve learnt writing. It is but a humble collection, but you’d lighten up my black little heart if you’d give it a glance-over.’

There was no mocking in her voice. Valkyrie nodded. ‘I accept this most generous gift, Lady Darcy.’

‘Okay,’ Darcy said. ‘Jane, do you mind filling me in on what you’ve done so far?’

‘Fill up my coffee cup and we can get started, intern.’

‘Shall do, boss.’

They worked all afternoon. The warrior kept watching the two human scientists do their research in fascination, what with their ways around texts and double-fact-checks and following trails of knowledge down as far as they could. It would not have been necessary, finally, for she had made up her mind on the very first page of Darcy list:

Astraea. Her name was Astraea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to the people pointing out my sometimes topsy turvy way of storytelling. It's difficult to project the movie-like scenes in my head into writing, I know I have to work on that a lot. Thank you for taking your time to let me know of such things! Constructive criticism is always hugely welcome, it helps so much. Okay, everyone loves comments. lol
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

During the days following Astraea’s choice of naming, Jane learnt a lot of things. First, how to reset the coffee machine’s programming, because she served the other two while they were busy discussing Darcy’s new position. Second, several words in Astraea’s language that Darcy could pronounce immediately, while Jane was happy to be able to identify the language to begin with. Third, flying alien horses liked carrots, too.

At the evening of her return, Darcy had mentioned that she had contacted SHIELD and made sure they would not bother them, at least for a while. To keep the nosy neighbours at bay, and because everyone said she needed fresh air, Jane went out several times a day to check if Little Feather had returned. According to Astraea, the steed had been trained to keep away from settlements, and the desert offered her enough in terms of food and water (how, Jane did not ask), so they did not have to worry about the animal. It was still good to make sure.

On the sixth sunset after Astraea’s arrival on Earth, Jane stood behind her lab, where she always went to look after the horse. Little Feather had immediately responded to the rhythm. Jane had picked the time on purpose, as it was easy for everyone to remember, even someone who could not carry a watch because they had hooves.

‘Sorry, no carrots today, I forgot to go to the store,’ she said as the steed stretched to double length in search of a treat. ‘Who am I kidding, of course I went. And you smelled that, right?’

As Jane fed the horse its treat, she heard Astraea’s boots crunch over the dirt. It could be Jane’s warped vision, or that she had never been able to tell one face from another unless they belonged to cartoon figures, but she was sure to see a difference between the Lady called Valkyrie she had come to know, and the Lady Astraea now nodding at her.

‘Six days of a carrot at dusk, but she’s still afraid of me,’ Jane said.

Astraea raised her brows. ‘What makes you think so?’

‘She doesn’t come to me. Just stays where she is and snatches her carrot.’

‘If she were afraid, she’d run away,’ Astraea said with a small smile. ‘See? She would act differently when I am here.’

‘Maybe she’s different from horses on Earth. I thought it’s all nose rubbing and sniffing with those.’

‘You wouldn’t want that,’ Astraea chuckled. ‘If a horse rubs its head on you, it has mistaken you for a pole in the ground. At least that’s how little respect it pays you.’

‘Oh. Okay, no nose-rubbing then.’

‘And if she were afraid of you,’ Astraea said, stepping close to the horse and rubbing its shoulder, then its belly, ‘she wouldn’t be here at all. Horses tend to be easily frightened by things they don’t know, but Little Feather knows people, and treats. She knows that she’s more than ten times your bodyweight, and even more in strength, so don’t underestimate your standing,’ she winked. ‘Make sure she respects you.’

Jane pouted. ‘Mkay.’ She took a step forward, trying to imitate Astraea’s pose. ‘Is that her name though? Little Feather? Like, is that a real name?’

‘It is. I translated it for you so you could understand. She understands when you talk to her, that is not so much a matter of language for animals. I do not use verbal commands for her.’

‘Why does she have a name anyway? I mean, you didn’t…’ Jane drew in her breath sharply. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say –‘

‘I gave her a name.’ Astraea’s voice had lowered to a mere whisper, but to Jane’s sensitive ears, the sound cut through the howling of the desert wind as if even the air would not come close to this sharpness. ‘That was insolence enough for me.’

Jane swallowed down her fear. ‘Why Little Feather then?’

‘Because she was the smallest in the litter,’ Astraea shrugged. ‘We both were. But we both survived, right, Little Feather?’

The horse threw it’s head into the air. ‘Sorry, that was a trick,’ Astraea grinned.

Jane had not noticed. ‘What do you mean – litter?’ she asked, shock making it impossible to control her features.

‘I think you call it genetic engineering. It is entirely common for us,’ Astraea added quickly. ‘And we grow up with our parents. Before we start service.’

Jane shivered. ‘Does everyone do this? Like, are you all genetically enhanced, or something like that?’

‘Maybe not the aristocrats… although there are rumours.’

‘No need for sweet talk. I’ve seen your crown prince. Closely.’

Astraea snorted. ‘Indeed you did.’

Not quite sure what she was supposed to make of that, Jane turned back to Little Feather. ‘Do you know him?’ she finally asked quietly.

‘A little. That is, I came to know his highness for some days during my last mission. Obviously. There is no more than that,’ Astraea said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly.

Now Jane grinned. ‘Did he make a move on you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Did he flirt with you?’

‘I do not mean –‘

‘That’s okay. I wouldn’t put it past him, poor you,’ Jane said, feeling a lot lighter. She stroked the horse’s shoulder, where its coat was soft as plush. ‘It felt so good at the time,’ she finally said. ‘It’s silly, but at the same time, it’s just so damn good when the most popular bachelor in the universe recognises you.’

‘ _You_ felt that way?’ Astraea asked.

‘Silly. As I said.’

‘I thought Darcy was jesting when she spoke of your self-esteem being too low…’

‘That’s what you talk about when I’m out of the room?’

‘Here you are!’ Darcy’s voice made Jane jump.

Trying to assemble as much of her dignity as she could manage, Jane said, ‘Honestly, never count on her to be around when you’re out of toilet paper. But whenever else, just say her name three times into a mirror at midnight.’

Astraea’s face spoke more clearly than words could have done.

‘We had agreed not to mention the toilet paper incident again…’ Darcy snarled.

‘I had to phone Erik!’

‘It worked, right?’

‘He was in Sweden!’

‘Lovely place.’

‘You sat in the cubicle next to mine!’

‘I was listening to the new Florence + The Machine album, Jane! _Florence_!’

Darcy took a deep, pronounced breath. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘dinner’s ready. You’d better come get it before _it gets cold_.’

‘Oh yes. We don’t want to miss any of Izzy’s beautiful takeaway meals,’ Jane said as loud as she could without yelling. Maybe she yelled a bit. It would serve anyone right who dared to eavesdrop.

They ate in relative silence that evening. Astraea had sent Little Feather away, so no more sounds of hooves on rock. Jane noticed how attached she had become to this noise, a deep, reassuring tock-tock, quite different compared to the metallic click-clack of iron-shot hooves on paved streets. There was also an audible absence of coyote howls whenever the steed visited.

After she had washed the food containers that had transported their dinner – Izzy insisted that people brought their own, re-usable dishware if they wanted to take her culinary queenship home with them – Jane said good night to her friends.

‘Hold on,’ Darcy said, standing up from the table where she had been pondering her notes again. ‘Mind if I come with you?’

‘Uhm. No?’

She looked at Astraea, but the woman merely shrugged. Apparently it was safe enough for her if the princess and her friend went to Jane’s trailer on their own.

Jane knew better than to ask Darcy what she wanted to tell her, but that did not make the silence between them any easier to carry. Finally, when the trailer’s door had closed behind them and Darcy had set up her phone to make sure they could not be overheard, Jane sat down heavily on the bench of her kitchen nook and stared up at the intern.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Calm down, boss,’ Darcy said, reaching into her bag. ‘I don’t know when they’ll fetch me, so I wanted to make sure you had this. Wanted to give this to you a while ago, but there’s never a good moment. Yeah, that includes now.’ She produced a stack of books. Jane felt lightly reminded of Hermione Granger’s favourite piece of luggage. ‘Here’s some reading material while I’m gone.’

Jane looked at the books. ‘Autism?’ she asked. ‘I’m in physics, not psychology. Similar words, very different students.’

‘I know, I once ran into the wrong building,’ Darcy said with a light shiver. ‘But this isn’t work. This is personal.’

‘I don’t have autism,’ Jane scoffed. It wasn’t exactly the first time this topic had come up, but seriously, she really wasn’t –

‘I do though.’

Jane stared. ‘Really?’

‘Yup.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Experience.’ Darcy pointed at the books. ‘Anyway, I thought this might be interesting to you, too. I’m not a doctor, but even doctors can’t tell without a lot of testing, so who knows? I think there’s many more of us than we’re usually acknowledged.’

‘Isn’t it usually diagnosed in men?’

‘Yeah, because if men have health problems, they get taken seriously.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Jane had had to meander between several doctors’ practices for several months once with severe headaches and dizziness, until one of them had realised that she might not suffer from stress alone, but a very simple lack of iron, too. It had meant bye-bye to vegetarianism for her.

‘I have some online tests though, they’re pretty good,’ Darcy added. ‘You got an e-mail.’

‘So that’s my homework?’ Jane asked.

‘That’s your homework.’

For a moment Jane did not know what to say. There was something very different on her mind all of a sudden, the only explanation she found to the question why Darcy would bring up the topic of disability, and throw it at somebody else no less.

‘How long will you be gone?’ she asked quietly.

‘I don’t know. Could be long though.’ Darcy squeezed herself onto the bench opposite Jane’s. ‘And I don’t think you’d want to come with me, do you?’

Jane shook her head.

‘I thought so.’ A smile spread on Darcy’s face, but it looked sad. Were smiles supposed to do that? ‘And I miss you already, boss.’

‘Oh come on,’ Jane said as harshly as she could. ‘When you’re queen, you can do what you want.’

‘If I make it that long.’ Darcy shrugged. ‘There’s not just a Loki to consider.’

Jane froze. ‘If it’s that dangerous, you shouldn’t do it.’

‘Says the woman who’s had me drive her into a tornado,’ Darcy gave back with a cool smile.

‘That was an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, it was perfectly safe.’

Darcy leant back, as far as that was possible in the trailer, and let out a laugh that sounded as if it had been bottled up inside her for far too long.

‘Anyway,’ she said when she had calmed a little, ‘I still have plans, like, I’m gonna write my book, and I might get my PhD, too. Not just an honorary one, but one where I can bother the prof all day and night because _I’m the queen of the universe and to HELL will you make me do all your research and then present it as your own, ASSHOLE_.’

Jane giggled. That sounded quite like something Darcy would do.

‘And I want you to move into my hometown, so I can make sure my whole family is safe in one place. Wormhole travel wrecks havoc on my digestion,’ Darcy said with a grimace.

Jane stared. She kept on doing so for the rest of the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the best contemporary books about autism out there is Rudi Simone's _Aspergirls_. Thanks Roz for recommending it!


	9. Chapter 9

‘Lady Jane!’ the gatekeeper nodded when the woman about half his height had herself spit out of the wormhole.

‘Hey buddy,’ Jane gave back once she had regained her standing inside the glittering observatory. Only friendly face she had met here on her first visit, outside of… well, that guy’s friends. ‘We’re only here because it’s quicker than going by car, and we had to consider the hooorse…’

She ducked as said horse flew right over her, carrying Astraea, as Jane deduced from the very pronounced ‘Wooohooooooooooh!’ that accompanied the scene.

‘That never gets old,’ Astraea grinned to her audience as she turned Little Feather. Aliens learnt English idioms far too quickly for Jane’s taste.

‘I wanna try that!’ Darcy whined.

‘Do that. And have a good time, we’re off then,’ Jane tried to say, but Darcy grabbed her arm.

‘Come on, boss, stay for a moment. It’s gonna be fine. We can go wormhole-hopping, and I’m sure there’s something in the library you’d want to look up…’

‘But why…’ At the lights that shone out of Astraea’s eyes at the mention of books, Jane sighed. ‘Okay. Maybe for a moment.’

‘Yay!’

As the three of them, after having nodded goodbye to the gatekeeper, left the observatory, Jane froze mid-step. They had been expected.

In front of the observatory, in full regalia that was possibly just their way of dressing comfortably, stood Darcy’s reception committee: about a hundred palace guards in geometric order, a good lot of noblewomen, precisely zero noblemen, about a dozen women whose plain dresses identified them as maids, as well as Queen Frigga herself. For a moment Jane wondered why there would be servants at a reception, but when the maids stepped forward and started to wrap, powder, coif, and offer snacks and drinks to Darcy right where she stood, that question was replaced by a good hearty feeling of annoyance.

‘That’s why,’ Darcy mumbled from the corner of her mouth. She did not look too irritated by the whole kerfuffle though.

Queen Frigga had stepped forward to address Darcy, who curtsied in best period drama fashion. Jane tried to do the same when it was her turn and almost tripped over her own ankle, but as she hardly received more than a regal nod, it did not seem to matter to anyone. The queen’s gaze had already shifted to Astraea, who had sunk onto one knee in warrior style.

Some maids tried to offer Jane what she remembered to be fruit, and another two seemed unsure about how to treat Astraea, which the latter, standing again, declined strictly. Jane absentmindedly wondered whether the gesture merely served to prevent a breach of etiquette. Then her thoughts immediately returned to the question where that warm-hearted, unconventional woman named Frigga had gone in order to return as cold as this.

Just when Jane began to distract herself with the question whether they would all shove over the bridge at once, the outer positions clearly risking an involuntary bath, a flying ship appeared over the city. It flew a graceful turn and came to a halt precisely in front of them. Frigga and Darcy climbed inside, followed by a trail of maids and noblewomen, and Jane was also complimented into the vessel. When she turned for Astraea, the warrior had mounted her steed once more.

The flight to the palace was a short one, but for Jane it lasted hours. If at least she could have flown with Astraea, she would not have felt half as powerless. This was not the first time she had been swept into this place without having been asked. She could already see herself locked up in a broom cupboard again.

They landed at a platform high up the palace’s main tower. The royal quarters, Jane thought. It certainly saved them the trouble of having to walk through the gigantic structure from bottom to top, with less than, what, two hundred staring eyes? She had never seen lifts or escalators either.

Little Feather was left on the platform, but to Jane’s relief, Astraea walked behind them as they went inside. She did not listen to Frigga and Darcy discussing their schedule, half of which was not in English. They were undoubtedly prepping Darcy to speak the local language like a native.

‘Okay, I’ll go get myself ready for the banquet,’ Darcy said at a large crossing of corridors. Before Jane could throw herself at her legs and effectively prevent her from going, the future princess had turned, taking a good load of their entourage with her.

‘Bye,’ Jane tried to wave after her, but Darcy was already busy listening to a list of things one of the noblewomen rattled down.

‘If it would suit your plans,’ Queen Frigga said, startling Jane, ‘would you mind taking tea with me? We have not seen in a while.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Jane managed to stammer, not even noting that _tea_ would be the meal, not the beverage, for they did not know that here, but had apparently imported about a dozen dictionaries from Downton Abbey and every Kenneth Branagh film ever. 

Queen Frigga clearly had no mindreading skills, for she gave her a warm smile Jane had not seen since their first encounter. Nodding at the human to stay by her side, they went down another corridor, painfully opposite to the one Darcy had taken.

They ended up in a beautiful room looking out over a large terrace, and from there over half the planetoid. Bright sunlight flooded the place, quite in contrast to the murky catacombs Jane associated with royal palaces. To her surprise, Frigga sent away the noblewomen as soon as they were in, and when all nibbles and beverages were in place, also waved away the servants. She sat down, having Jane do the same.

Jane looked up at Astraea. The warrior had taken position standing between the two sofas Jane and Frigga sat on. Apparently the queen found this irritating, for she said:

‘Would you not like to sit?’

Astraea looked as if she had been asked to change into jogging trousers, put her feet on the table, and have a beer, too. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Then she said, unusually quiet: ‘I, I should not think so… your majesty?’

‘I have heard that you have a name now,’ Frigga said.

Jane felt her guts sink into some hell frozen over twice. Trying to drown out the pounding of her heart, she quickly said, ‘It’s custom on Earth. And it was my idea anyway. It’s not Astraea’s fault.’

The queen looked at her, then back at the other woman. ‘I noticed,’ she said. Then she said nothing. Seconds of silence, strong enough to bring down a grown man of thousands of years of age. On Jane, it merely had the effect that she was grateful for having a seat. She raised her chin. Astraea had saved her and Darcy from the Darkelves and protected them against who knew what else. Darkelves were much worse than this. If Frigga thought it was okay to bully Astraea, she should have thought twice about making her return from the dead public news.

‘The world changes,’ the queen finally said. ‘I thought I would not forget this. It might be a matter of age,’ she added, not without the hint of a smile, which did not help in making the words sound less sad.

‘You have a successor now.’ Jane hoped that it came across as unfriendly as it was intended. ‘Though I guess Darcy is not who you wanted that to be.’

‘Certainly not.’

Jane snorted.

‘Between the two of us, and I am sure that this is where this will stay, I fear that the burden will be too much for her.’

Maybe not what Jane had expected.

‘That was to be expected, too, wasn’t it?’ A little softer, Jane continued, ‘Although I’m not sure if you had any say in the matter.’

‘None, or I would have had this nightmare stopped before it began. However, as things are, all I can do is helping Darcy as much as I can.’ The queen reached for her goblet, only to stop mid-way and glance up at Jane. ‘You would not want to reconsider your position on this, would you?’

‘You mean, get back together with your son and become queen instead?’

‘Well, I could…’

Jane scoffed. ‘First of all, I’m not half as good in these things as Darcy is. She’s much stronger and a lot wiser than me, and she’s been preparing for years. Second, your son walked out on me, not the other way ‘round. I wasn’t asked.’ _Not in a way I could have answered._

For a moment pure silence filled the room, as if even life outside held its breath. Then Jane realised what she had said.

Frigga had leant back, eying her with another one of those expressions Jane could not read. Maybe Darcy wasn’t so far off with her autism theory.

‘I mean it the way it is,’ Jane sputtered. She was still talking to the mother of the man she had just accused, a millennia-old sorceress of serious skills with the sword. The notion gave Jane an urge to explain herself, least the queen was in barbecue mode. ‘I came home one day, he said something I couldn’t understand because I was half asleep, and that was it. I’m sure Thor sees that differently…’

‘I have not spoken to him yet.’ The queen sounded quiet. That should be good, right? ‘I thought it was not my right to meddle.’

Jane nodded, then stopped herself in fear of being mistaken in meaning. ‘I just can’t explain it,’ she said, noticing that her voice was breaking. Impossible. Jane took a deep breath. _Think of horse dung, Foster._ ‘I was to die for him. He thought it was okay to go away. Flirt with other women, too,’ she said not without bitterness. If wronged by a man, tell his mother.

‘Did he now?’ Queen Frigga said with an edge to her voice. Oh dear. Maybe not such a good idea after all.

Jane straightened up and shrugged nonchalantly. ‘From what I’ve heard.’ She tried not to look at Astraea, but the queen already had.

‘Did he?’ the queen asked again.

‘I took care to keep up protocol,’ Astraea said, her voice as melodious as ever, but with a notable undertone of tension. Jane wrecked her brain for something she could say to save her friend from whatever grudge would hit her now, but there was nothing coming up, nothing at all. If things went to the worst, Jane decided, she would simply throw herself between Astraea and whoever wanted to hurt her. She could bite kneecaps, and she would.

‘We shall speak later,’ the queen replied. ‘And I demand to know from now on whenever a member of my household approaches you disrespectfully.’

‘Yes, your majesty,’ Astraea said.

Jane dared to breathe out. ‘If you do not mind, I think I should go. Darcy has made an appointment at –‘ She was about to say ‘her family’s’, but stopped herself in time. ‘In her hometown.’

‘She said so,’ Frigga nodded. ‘A good idea, although of course I would prefer if you stayed with us. I am sure Darcy would appreciate your company.’

Right into the heart.

‘Yeah, she might…’ Jane said. ‘But I’m sure she has her reasons for suggesting the place.’ She looked up at Astraea. Now or never. They had talked about this in the morning. ‘Actually…’

‘Your majesty, if I may,’ Astraea said.

Frigga looked at her with another expression Jane could not read. It was not surprise, she was sure of that.

‘Given the circumstances, it might be advisable if I accompanied Lady Jane. For her safety as well as the protection of her highness’ birth family.’

Jane tried to catch Astraea’s gaze, but the warrior held herself steadily in front of her queen.

The miracle happened. Frigga looked down first.

She sighed. ‘That might indeed be for the best.’ Before Astraea could so much as flinch, the queen had drawn her into one of her incredible hugs. ‘We shall all miss you.’

Jane scowled. They better should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some unforeseen things have come up so I might not be able to post a chapter every week. I write this story whenever there is a free minute at night or the weekend, which doesn't amount to much, as you can probably imagine. Updates stay on Friday though, so it should be easier for you to check during weekends. Hope that is okay.


	10. Chapter 10

In later years, they would often laugh about this story. How she, Astraea, had fallen into a daze the moment she realised not only that she had been embraced by the queen herself as if one of her own family, but that Her Majesty had let her go. Jane would keep insisting that she, the tiny human, had dragged the much taller warrior off her planetoid, while Astraea would swear that it had been her carrying a very exhausted Jane back to her home planet.

Whichever story was true, or maybe they were both, they somehow made it back to Earth. On a cloudy afternoon, occasionally drizzly but otherwise pleasantly boring, the flying horse and its two passengers touched ground just outside a small human settlement called Common Sense.

‘ _Common Sense_?’ was what Jane said when the short, wiry woman with short, wiry hair of speckled grey welcomed them. She introduced herself as Leyla Lewis, Darcy’s birthmother. So that was where Darcy had her pallor from.

‘The first place they chose was called _Hope_ , but according to legend, that was right on an earthquake rift,’ Ms Lewis shrugged.

‘Compared to that, the current choice makes sense,’ Astraea nodded.

Ms Lewis smiled broadly. ‘Doesn’t it? Now come, there’s tea and cake.’

Astraea exchanged a glance with Jane. They had heard everything about Darcy’s difficulties to obtain a whole piece of cake in her house just once in her lifetime. This would be interesting.

The small town lay a little away from the coast, up on a high cliff and surrounded by forests that deserved the name. Little Feather had landed on a piece of grassland kept in unkempt shape by two cows and a handful of sheep further off. The steed ignored the other beasts as Astraea left her to her own.

After a mere two crossings of main streets – the town did not have any more that deserved the name – Ms Lewis stopped. ‘Welcome to Lewis Manor,’ she said festively.

‘Oh,’ was what Astraea managed to say, trying not to stomp Jane’s foot too hard in order to make the human stop laughing. Jane gave off a feeble screeching sound before biting her sleeve.

What Darcy’s mother had called a Manor had once, probably, started out as a respectable little family home. Through the successive addition of room after room, layer after layer of paint, and repair after repair, the building had morphed into an eccentric conglomerate of pure being-lived-in. Astraea had not thought to find such a sight on Earth. It was a style common in her home, but that the short-lived humans were capable of such consistent inconsistency…

‘Give that back, you stupid old prune!’

‘You’re a prune! You gave it to me!’

Ms Lewis looked up at the windows from which the voices had been audible. ‘You’re only eight minutes younger than your sister, there is no need to call each other old!’ she yelled. ‘Twins,’ she shrugged. ‘Back from college for the first time. One would think that separated dorms would make them happy to live together again for the vacations, but it’s my iPod here, my jeans there…’

‘Darcy has an iPod, too, doesn’t she?’ Astraea asked Jane.

Jane nodded. ‘She’s magnetically attached to it.’

‘You have to be, if you’re a Lewis,’ a voice from the windows above them said. When Astraea looked up, she saw a young woman resting on the windowsill. The whole family seemed incapable of processing sunlight, judging from their distinct lack of anything resembling a tan.

‘Now you’re exaggerating, Daisy,’ Ms Lewis said.

‘I’m Duffy. Yes, really,’ Duffy said to the visitors.

‘I’ve spent an average of twelve hours in labour with each one of you,’ Ms Lewis snapped, ‘I do expect that to give me the right of naming you as I want! If it were not down to my iron principles, you could introduce yourself as Miss She Takes After Her Father’s Side now!’

‘Ninety-five minutes, Mom! Ninety-five minutes for me, I’ve asked the Doc!’ Duffy gave back. ‘And it’s not fair that you calculate the twins twice when one of them only needed eight minutes! _Eight minutes_ , Mom!’

Astraea dared a glance at Jane’s face. What she saw there at least gave her reassurance that she was not quite alone in the strange sensation crawling through her chest: fear. Hordes of Darkelves, legions of Skrull, and even a fully grown dragon had not been able to prepare the warrior for the perils of House Lewis.

They were led into the family home, a maze of narrow corridors lined with shelves and boxes, piles of books, and all sorts of wondrous things, at least half of which looked as if made by the sisters many years prior. There were screeches of smaller birds to be heard, pets, Astraea assumed, and the occasional electronic voice, maybe from a television set. It was a labyrinth of fascination, one she would have loved to investigate, had she not assumed that it would appear impolite.

‘What kind of tea do you drink?’ Ms Lewis enquired. ‘We have all sorts, except the Icelandic moss, because Dora hogs the stuff.’

‘She brought it back from Iceland in the first place,’ the young woman named Duffy said from a doorway to their left. Astraea forgot to nod in reply, for Ms Lewis had opened the doors to the kitchen. And what a kitchen that was.

If the hallway had seemed cluttered, the kitchen made it appear the epitome of minimalism. There was no surface, no space of wall, no square hand width of floor homogenous to itself. Generations of generations of Lewises had applied, pasted, brought in, put up, and decorated over the layers and layers their predecessors had created. They let the spacious room appear much smaller than it could have been, and the massive table in its middle, with at least three legs not fitting the others, did its own work.

Not one chair resembled the other, and Astraea was not even sure how many chairs she was seeing. Several half-complete sets of dishware stood on display, with myriads of cups and plates strewn all over the place. There were books and folders of paper that looked a lot of what Darcy had called homework, several things that might have been toys, electronic devices whose mixed purposes Astraea wilfully ignored, abandoned clothes, newspapers and magazines, and a myriad of other things.

It was the epitome of luxury.

‘Almost like my Mom’s,’ Jane grinned, ‘well, when she was living in Wales. Some friend left her a house or something, that’s how she usually works… She moves around a lot,’ she added almost apologetically to their host.

‘That reminds me,’ Ms Lewis said, ‘you’re supposed to call her. Wait, I’ll fetch you the phone, we have such a fancy wireless one now…’

‘She’s said that for the past ten years, which is how long she’s had it,’ Duffy shrugged.

Jane started to rummage in her bag. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got my own phone…’

‘You know Ms Foster?’ Astraea asked.

At the sight of the lightning in Jane’s eyes, she promptly wished she had not.

Ms Lewis, thumping two mugs onto the table where Astraea had not even seen any space, said, ‘Of course I do.’

‘Darcy…’ Jane growled, much to Astraea’s amazement, but did not seem to dare raise her voice against Ms Lewis. The reason as to why it would be so enraging to have their arrival arranged by one’s mother eloped Astraea.

‘How about this,’ Ms Lewis said, her voice snapped back into her aggressively friendly sing-song tone, ‘you call home while we put on the kettle here?’

Jane snorted at the word ‘home’ with a face as if sniffing Bilgesnipe bile, but left the kitchen in direction of the hallway. Astraea staid behind, feeling uncomfortably helpless.

‘Don’t be shy, take a seat.’ Duffy pointed at a group of chairs, two of which were not piled with clothes, books, and bags of things Astraea could not even guess. Astraea approached a nice ocean-blue one, only to be stopped by: ‘No! Sorry, that’s the cat’s place. It died two years ago, which means the other cats defend that place with dedication now.’

‘Do they honour their friend?’

‘No. They just all want the chair for itself, but haven’t fought out the hierarchy yet. It’s just clear that humans aren’t on it.’

Duffy stomped over, lifting the baggage off an alarmingly orange piece of furniture that only qualified as something to sit in at second glance. ‘Sorry for the clutter. Best chair in the house though. I’d invite you over to my place, but it’s empty, no furniture to speak of.’

Astraea carefully lowered herself into the cushions. So soft… terrifying. With the braveness of a born warrior, she _sat_. A chair would not best her, no matter how comfortable. ‘Have you just moved in then?’ she asked. Jane had given her an approximate idea of how humans moved houses.

‘No, I’ve lived there for the past five years,’ Duffy shrugged. ‘Just never felt the urge to spoil the luxury of having actual space. I grew up _here_ ,’ she added, pointing at their surroundings.

‘This is a very nice house.’

‘You wouldn’t think so if you’d ever been on dusting duty here.’

‘Very spacious and quiet.’

‘Do come over for Passover.’

Astraea, aware of Ms Lewis’ gaze piercing the very air, chose to say nothing.

She would have been content with the relative silence of the house, occasional muffled footsteps from the floors above, the birdsong outside, and the continuously increasing bubbling of the kettle. Ms Lewis did not share that opinion, for she said:

‘Our Duffy works in computers.’

‘Oh, do you?’ Astraea replied. This was smalltalk, she had learnt. Acquiring the corresponding tone had taken a full two hours, but she was quite proud of the result.

Or maybe not, for Duffy rolled her eyes. ‘Stock trade, investments, and a regular income from advertisings on my blog about fluffy bunnies. It’s enough for a place of my own, a Netflix subscription, and three sushi nights per month.’

‘She is our family’s first millionaire!’ Ms Lewis beamed. ‘And she never even finished college. But I’ve heard that’s a requirement these days…’

Astraea carefully moved one of her feet into position in case she had to jump up very quickly. The expression on Duffy’s face prophesied a mediocre thunderstorm when she said:

‘Yeah, but I’ll bet you that most of my fellow no-degree-IT-millionaires did not decide to call their student fees a waste mid-term because they felt the urge to tell their mother that her son is in fact a daughter. Name on my birth certificate is still MacDuff by the way.’

‘You should have seen my poor little darling the day she appeared on this doorstep out of the blue,’ Ms Lewis said as she lifted the kettle off its base to pour the tea. ‘All crying in her pretty clothes. Thought I wouldn’t welcome her home!’

‘She said I should stop crying because it ruined my make-up, and that I was too thin and there was cake in the house,’ Duffy shrugged. ‘But there wasn’t because the twins were home.’

‘The older twins,’ Ms Lewis pointed out. ‘The younger twins were busy winning their next trophy. They’re _very_ good at spelling.’

‘So I heard,’ Astraea said. Where in the stars’ name was Jane?

Duffy raised an immaculately drawn brow, accentuating a knowing grin. ‘Do you now?’

Astraea gladly returned the grin as she received her cup of tea, followed by a hearty dollop of milk that extended the amount of tea in the cup. Maybe this was why the Lewises looked as if they’d vanish if they stood in front of a white wall. Astraea decided to sip her tea very carefully.

‘Is that… peppermint tea with milk?’ Jane said the moment she stepped back into the kitchen, shoving her phone into her backpack. Astraea glanced at the liquid in her cup, then quickly placed it on top of a stack of plastic boxes. One contained crayons, one some sort of biscuit that might have been pet food by the smell of it, and one a collection of tiny figurines brightly painted. The sight made her heart itch again with the urge of exploring all the humanness concentrated in this house.

With the tea came very rich biscuits, chocolate-and-cherry cake that made Astraea’s teeth stick together, chocolate buttons and for some reason strips of dried fish that rendered Jane’s face an interesting green shade. When that particular tin was finally closed, Ms Lewis said:

‘So nice to have you here by the way. We’ve had a vacancy for several months now, I wondered if that might be something for you.’

‘Pathetic, Mom. Listen,’ Duffy interrupted. ‘Mom’s the mayor of this town. And Dad’s the cop. The only one. Sheriff or something. This family practically runs the city.’

‘Literally so at the yearly half-marathon,’ Ms Lewis snapped. ‘And it is _I_ who runs the city. Your father is employee of the town.’

‘Yeah, she’s everyone’s godmother,’ Duffy said acerbically.

Unimpressed, Ms Lewis continued, ‘You are very welcome to be our guests if you like, of course, but Darcy said that it might be an interesting position for you, so –‘

‘Will you finally get to the point!’ Duffy yelled. Astraea began to feel quite sympathetic for her.

‘I shall, thank you very much!’ Ms Lewis said. ‘Either way, the point being, there is a vacant house in the city at the moment. It belonged to old Ms Morris, but she passed away last year. It’s not haunted, in fact, why we’ve been waiting so long to find new inhabitants for the house is that we were hoping for a haunting. We’ve asked every local priest, shaman, witch, any medium around, but no such luck.’

‘Dang it, Mom!’ Duffy growled. ‘I wanted to tell them about the sixty-seven religions in this place! Only one Jedi, thanks common sense.’

‘ _What I was trying to say_ ,’ Ms Lewis took up again, ‘is that the house is in excellent condition, and not too eccentric for your taste, I hope. There is a little obligation attached though…’

‘The house is part of the city library, which you’d have to manage,’ Duffy said. ‘And it’s built in trees.’

Astraea fell off her chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long. This was a difficult chapter to write, and a lot of things interfered. Thanks so much for your patience!


	11. Chapter 11

The seagull was so close, she could look it in the eye. Inch by inch it approached, gliding on nothing but air against the very wind. She could calculate the air currants by watching the tiny alterations the wings took as they adjusted their position in the sky. Only about ten feet distance…

‘Will you look at this…’

Astraea’s voice, or rather the fact that she had never heard it in such dreamy a tone, pulled Jane out of her reveries.

‘This is the western reading room,’ Ms Lewis explained, ‘it is not as big as the southern one, and the orangery on the lake is spectacular, but visitors appreciate the sea view here.’

‘It is magnificent.’

Jane stepped next to her friend to see what she was seeing. The room itself looked cosy, certainly, what with its many books on shelves of lightly oiled wood, harmonising with the light blue walls, and equally light tables and chairs. The antique Tiffany lights were the only piece of luxury, and they fit the art déco windows that showed a spectacular view of the sea. Thousands of miles of water, almost half around the globe…

‘It is.’

‘Of course you don’t have to decide now,’ Ms Lewis said. ‘It’s a big task to take on a whole library, and a job on top, if you get my meaning…’

Jane felt Astraea turn to her, and she did likewise. Their gazes met. She did not need to ask what Astraea was thinking. Jane felt herself smile.

‘Can we stay here tonight?’ Astraea said.

Genius idea, Jane thought. As much as she was in awe of the Lewises, their house gave her nightmares. The library however…

What the place of the name Common Sense called its town library was a labyrinth of buildings melted into the trees of the forest surrounding the little city. It had been built by the city’s standard eccentric millionaire in the 1920s, starting with a large tree house only steps away from the main street, and branching off on stilts and tree trunks into the light woods. Those originated in the estate’s former orchard, not the ancient rainforest surrounding Common Sense on all other sides. From the window she faced, Jane could see the first blossoming trees, of which fruit she could not guess.

Through bridges in the air, tunnels of glass and covered walkways, many more buildings of, carefully expressed, individual styles had been added. While the main building complex contained the first big reading room, administrative offices, and the maintainers’ suite in the back, other houses held special collections as well as storage space, more reading areas, a relaxation room, and a small workshop for repairing books. One pavilion behind the main building had been placed in a lake. If Darcy had been here…

‘Sorry for being late,’ Darcy said, sweeping into the reading room, ‘I’ve had two dress fittings and a meeting with the Nixian ambassador to get through. Puddles everywhere. Next time I’ll request rubber boots with my gown.’

‘Hello sweetheart,’ Ms Lewis said, ‘just in time for dinner. Would you mind arranging the table when we get back? And the cats need fresh litter.’

‘In case you were worried that I might get over the top,’ Darcy shrugged. ‘Hey Astraea. Hey boss. Hope you’re not too shocked.’

Jane did not ask what in particular she was supposed to be shocked about, but fortunately Astraea had better nerves:

‘It is fantastic. I just hope I can learn what it takes to be a librarian…’

‘You’ll be shocked,’ Darcy said. ‘It’s surprisingly simple, there’s about a gazillion of cataloguing systems, none of them suitable for a small-town library with a broad approach to the definition of what’s worth being put on a shelf, so none of those systems is in use here.’

‘ _Is_ there a system?’ Astraea asked carefully.

‘Oh yes,’ Ms Lewis cut in. ‘The books get numbered by the order they come in. Very simple.’

Jane and Astraea exchanged a glance, accompanied by Darcy’s nod. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Something needs to be done.’

‘I do hope this, huh… simplicity of organisation will not put you off,’ Ms Lewis smiled. ‘I’ve been assured it isn’t much to do, you wouldn’t even need to, after all, it’s always worked quite well…’

‘Unscientific,’ Darcy snarled. ‘Mind you, I’d have taken the job myself, but as it turned out…’ She shrugged theatrically. Jane was quite glad not to stand in line of Ms Lewis’s stare.

‘Too kind of you to remember the place where they cook proper dinner then,’ Darcy’s mother said pointedly. ‘Come to speak of which, I suggest we go back.’

‘Are the twins home?’ Darcy asked.

‘Precisely.’

‘In that case we should dash. They’ll eat anything that’s not rock.’ The expression on Darcy’s face darkened. ‘Even deep-frozen bread rolls.’

‘It was summer, and we had run out of ice cream on a Saturday night.’

‘The Common Sense tragedy of August 2009,’ Darcy shrugged. ‘Now hurry up, make sure it won’t be repeated.’

* * *

Dinner had been… adventurous. It had consisted of everyone trying to get to the food before the twins did, all except Ms Lewis, Astraea, and Jane, the first of whom had kept shovelling aforementioned food onto the latter two’s plates. Jane had frequently swapped hers with Darcy. She amused herself with the thought that this might be the first night at home during which Darcy had ever received a complete meal without having to arm wrestle anyone or run after the food.

To Jane’s disappointment, Duffy did not show up again. She had to work, but Darcy said that Duffy had not attended family dinners since she had moved out. Maybe not the worst choice, what with the twins singing along to the radio – they looked like shorter clones of Duffy – three cats meowing while a fourth sat on the lamp and could not be coaxed down, unholy amounts of excellent cooking Leyla Lewis had magicked up from nowhere, an old aunt who just came in to fetch a bowl of porridge and then left again whilst muttering something about quantum cake under her breath, Ms Lewis conducting everything when she wasn’t dumping jumbled facts about Common Sense on her guests, and finally a jovial, spindle-thin Mr Lewis trotting into the kitchen, saying hi to Astraea and Jane, followed by a complete weather report of the past, present, and forthcoming week.

When they finally returned to the library, Jane felt more exhausted than the time she had attempted a half marathon.

Darcy had somehow managed to convince her mother that the mayor’s presence wasn’t required any longer, a miracle in which the event of cat number four jumping into the soup pot might have played its part. Jane would be forever grateful to the noble beast, but there and then, she took the time to take deep, thirsty breaths of the quiet night air.

Not much later they were back in the library’s main building, in the administrator’s flat to be precise. It lay in a small back wing of the house, all bare floors of bleached wood, large windows, simple furniture. After Lewis Manor, the place felt like balm on Jane’s sore soul.

‘I’m almost a bit envious of you,’ Darcy said as they put fresh sheets onto the duvets. After the desert, spring’s sea climate so high up north felt terribly chilly.

‘You wanted to become librarian?’ Jane asked.

Darcy grinned, but it looked a little lopsided. ‘If political sciences had failed me… too bad my plan A worked out much better than anyone could have guessed.’

‘What is that plan A then?’

Darcy eyed her questioningly. ‘What do you mean?’

Jane sighed. ‘Sorry, bit overwrought here. Long day. I just wondered why you came back right now, I thought you’d stay much longer.’

‘I got the evening off,’ Darcy shrugged. Jane left it at that.

As Darcy would stay with her family for the night, despite her claims that her old room had long been transformed into a dancing studio for her great-grandmother whenever that woman visited from Seattle, Jane found herself alone before the thought had even started to sink in. How had she come to this place? Astraea, she had been with Astraea. 

She discovered Astraea lost in a heap of thick tomes in the main reading room. Jane did not have the nerve to address her friend, not with that expression of pure enthralment on Astraea’s face, her eyes wide, her lips a little opened in absentmindedness. If it hadn’t been for the leaden fatigue in her bones, Jane would have dug herself into those books right next to Astraea. They could have met in the middle and never known, except for that lovely feeling of sharing a read.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Astraea said when all of a sudden she noticed Jane. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to let you wait…’

‘Perfectly fine, really,’ Jane said. She had no idea why Astraea looked so flustered, and it did not help with the unsettlement she had been feeling all day already. She was the human, she should help Astraea get to know Earth – and she felt like a huge failure at that. The anger she tried to stomp back to wherever it had come from was very much not deserved. It would have felt better than what it was supposed to hide though.

‘Now, I know where all these go, just a moment,’ Astraea said, pulling armfuls of books toward her. ‘Will only take a second.’

‘Can I help?’ Jane tried. She had no idea what to do. This was a library, what was she supposed to do with a library? She was an astrophysicist, but right now not even ursa major could have given her directions. This was a new place, there were confusing people all around, and she was in no shape to make sure Astraea was okay, Astraea, who had much more of a right to feel out of place –

Sleep. They both needed sleep.

‘Uhm… this goes there,’ Astraea said. She handed Jane a book, a rather small one, belonging to a place easy to reach on the shelf. For a moment Jane did not know if she was supposed to be embarrassed or amused.

The other ten or twelve books were replaced on the shelves in no time at all, making Jane suspect that Astraea had photographic memory of immense quality. It certainly helped finding the way back to their flat, which lay down the main hall, up a side corridor and then up a hidden staircase to another layer of tree crowns. Perfectly simple, really.

The flat contained two bedrooms that, for reasons Jane did not want to think about, lay on two different sides of the building, with the living room in the corner separating them. As Ms Lewis had prattled on about the beauty of the master bedroom, Jane had thrown her backpack into the smaller one, not paying much attention to it. She left the lights switched off now, except for the night stand. The moon did its work to illuminate what was necessary.

French windows that led out to narrow wooden walkways might look romantic to some, but Jane would have preferred no windows at all that night. Not having bothered about the blinds, the moon’s bright light did not let her sleep – or at least that was what she told herself. Being overwrought, jet-lagged, and incredibly miserable certainly played no part at all in it.

It took her about an hour of first being terribly cold, then terribly hot, back-sore, unable to lie on either side, and finally wide awake, until Jane could not deny any longer that she stood no chance of falling asleep any time soon. She’d blame the bed in the morning. For now, she needed… the bathroom. A glass of water. Maybe a cup of tea. If there was any in the kitchen…

Jane tiptoed down the broad hallway, grateful that the flat was so sparsely furnished. If the entrance door lay southward, the door ahead should be the living room, behind that Astraea’s room, the bathroom to the right, and the kitchen at the end… years of navigating through computer games tended to pay themselves off in situations such as this one.

She was about to pass the third door to the left when she heard something. The door stood open by a hand’s width, allowing Jane a glimpse inside.

What she had heard was sobbing. Jane saw Astraea’s huddled-over shape on the bed.

Oh shit.

A stab of pain went through Jane’s heart, physical enough to make her cringe – and the only thing that kept her from running away. If only she were someone who knew what to do in such situations, what to say to help… why was Darcy not here? Because she could not always be there. Because there was only Jane. Only Jane.

Taking herself together, she feebly knocked against the doorframe. Even Jane’s confident knocks tended to be overheard by everyone with normal ears, and this one wouldn’t have impressed a feather landing on a cushion.

Still, the sobbing stopped.

‘Can I come in?’ Jane asked carefully. She would have given a lot for a perfectly normal ‘No, everything’s fine’, but there was no such luxury. Only a weak ‘Mm-mm’ of approval, easy enough to overhear, but Jane’s ears had never been in for sloppiness either.

‘Hey… what is it?’ she said. ‘Are you cold?’

Astraea sat with her duvet drawn tightly around her shoulders. Jane carefully lowered herself onto the bed, not quite sure if she was allowed, but feeling even more awkward of asking more unwanted questions.

‘A little.’

‘Oh, well, it is cold… uhm, I think there’s central heating here, let’s put that on…’ Jane went over to the windows and fiddled with the thermostat. ‘This will take a while… how about a cup of tea?’

‘That… might be good,’ Astraea nodded.

Not much later, they had the kettle going in the kitchen and a well-filled jar of biscuits between them on the table. Jane had refrained from turning on the main lights, but even in the faint glow of the stove lamps she could see that Astraea’s eyes were puffy from crying, and her voice hadn’t fully recovered yet.

‘This is a nice,’ Astraea said. ‘Thank you. But you don’t have to stay up for my sake. You must be tired.’

‘Just as insomniac as you,’ Jane shrugged. ‘Honestly, you’re doing me a favour.’

Astraea did not reply, but gave Jane a little smile instead. It felt like the only spark of light in this endless greyness.

‘What kind of tea is this?’ Astraea asked again. ‘It is not made of herbs.’

‘Earl Grey, I think, definitely no peppermint. Do you want milk? I hope there is some…’

Jane opened the refrigerator.

‘Oh… uhm…’

‘No milk?’

‘Three types.’

She stepped aside so Astraea could see better.

‘Ms Lewis is a very potent woman.’

‘I’m afraid that is the case.’

The refrigerator was filled to the brim with more different types of foodstuffs than Jane could have named from memory. Fruit and vegetables, yoghurt and blancmanges, sausages and breakfast meat, and a lot of things in boxes that looked like pre-cooked meals, filled every cubic inch of space. She did not dare to open the freezer.

‘That’s way too much for two people, it’s gonna go bad,’ Jane said.

Astraea shrugged, ‘We could invite Duffy and Darcy.’

‘Excellent idea.’

With the scary contents of the refrigerator once more secured behind its door, it was easier to concentrate on tea again. Too bad that the sudden silence of the wind outside chose this very moment to make it impossible to be in the same room with another person.

‘So, are –‘

‘Thank you,’ Astraea said.

Jane found herself gawking, and for once did not care. ‘For what?’

‘Coming with me. Being here.’ Astraea put her cup on the table, staring down into the remains of tea. ‘I know that you are a scientist, and that you are here…’

‘No, no, honestly…’ Why was it always so difficult to find the right thought in moments like this? ‘If it weren’t for Darcy bringing us both here, I wouldn’t have any idea what to do or where to go. I haven’t worked in months. If it weren’t for you, I’d have no idea where to go.’

‘I have not felt like this since I began my service,’ Astraea said quietly.

The sentence sank into Jane’s mind like a block of concrete to the ground of a completely innocent lake. ‘Sorry, I don’t know how… what does that mean, start your service?’

‘When I left my birth family to become a warrior in the king’s service. Sorry. You can’t know these things.’

Jane tried to ask about Astraea’s family, but could not find a way of making it sound tactful. What if they were dead, or worse, did not want their daughter around any longer? If they had wanted to see her, Astraea would have visited them ages ago, wouldn’t it?

‘But it doesn’t mean that you can never return to your home world, does it?’ Jane asked instead.

‘I hope not,’ Astraea said, lifting the cup of tea to her face again, but not drinking from it. ‘I have been asking myself.’

‘Nah, Darcy wouldn’t allow them to keep you out!’ Jane said. ‘And if she puts her foot down, gods fall. Or aliens mistaken for deities, doesn’t matter.’

At least her words made Astraea smile a little, weak as that smile was.

‘You’re homesick then?’ Jane asked, hoping that it wasn’t too bold. She just couldn’t have people not telling her what the problem was directly.

‘Well, I wouldn’t call the palace my home…’ Astraea said, eyebrows raised. ‘It’s just… I’ve spent almost six hundred years there. I am about nine hundred Earth years old, in case you wondered,’ she added quickly.

‘I love it when you calculate,’ Jane said. Caught herself saying it. Tried a sheepish grin.

Astraea had not seen, she was looking back at her teacup. ‘Homesick is a good word, isn’t it? Very useful.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane took a swig from her cup, only to realise that it was empty. Finally! With the verve of a rabbit in the carrot patch, she jumped up to refill the kettle. Anything was better than to tell Astraea that the only thing worse than being homesick was to be homesick for a home that did not exist any longer, mostly because one’s father had transformed that safe haven of a bedroom one had lived in for decades into another part of his study. There was no way to relate those seven square metres of self-pity to the whole world Astraea had just lost.

‘I do go to a lot of places, all the time,’ Astraea insisted over the noise of the boiling water. Almost nothing spoke of her having cried her eyes out only about half an hour ago. ‘Just not… permanently.’

Jane just nodded.

They had another cup of tea together, in a silence that might not have been comfortable, but at least exhausted. It was close to midnight when they finally, without a word, cleared the cups into the sink and switched off the kitchen lights.

Astraea was about to enter her bedroom when Jane felt that sting at her heart again. She did not dare to say anything though – until Astraea hesitated in the doorway.

‘Do you mind –‘ Jane started. ‘Do you – I mean, I’m feeling a bit lonely, and that’s a double bed… mind if we share the room? Tonight?’

She swallowed, hard, feeling very cold. Astraea just stared at her, then said with a tired smile:

‘Yes, of course. That would be nice.’

That stinging little heart did a little leap.

The heating had done its work, so the room was nice and cosy. Almost a little stuffy, but Jane would not be picky. She quickly went to fetch all pillows and blankets she could find, then spread an additional duvet on the mattress to lie on – an old trick of hers invented in a number of draughty dormitory rooms. Some cushions placed on the sides completed their nest.

With the lights turned down, Jane wrapped herself into the biggest blanket still available and snuggled into the deepest part of the nest. There was not much space left, partly because of all the cushions, but mostly because Astraea already lay sprawled over most of the bed, apparently quite smug with herself. Jane did not mind, and in a bout of revengeful mischief, wrapped an arm around what she guessed was Astraea under all those blankets.

It was far too warm to sleep, and now that darkness had returned, the sadness crept back, too. Was this really a good idea? Wasn’t she pressing her own issues on her friend too much?

She did what she had always done in situations as awkward as this: she listened to Astraea’s breathing to see if she was sleeping. No, definitely not. That sounded like… more tears, stifled.

Jane huddled a little closer, adjusting her arm around Astraea’s shoulders. She felt Astraea put her own arm over Jane only a moment later, snuggling up to Jane until they were properly hugging. Such a thing as a happy end did not exist. There was just –

‘Jane?’

‘Mm?’

‘Sorry, but… you’re breathing on me.’

There were just many, many moments of awkwardness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter almost got lost when my text editing programme crashed. Actually, it was lost, but here's to dilligent backup, so I only had to rewrite a small part.


	12. Chapter 12

Coming to terms with humanity and its myriads of possible ways of life, multiplied by an infinite amount of detail concerning performance, was a science of its own – this much Astraea had learnt during her very first hours on Earth. She had been wrong.

It was much worse.

She and Jane had started to sort through the library collection. To be precise, Jane had insisted to take care of their flat half of the day, while Astraea did her early morning training in the woods and returned quickly to start on their gigantic task.

They wanted to get an impression of the nature of the library’s collection before they would decide upon a system to put it all into order. That the books had never been registered digitally so far helped in this aspect. Astraea spent most of her days taking books out of shelves, typing down title, author, and other relevant information, together with the book’s placement so they would find it again later. Jane said Astraea worked too much, Darcy said she should take a vacation, and Astraea refused to understand what either of them was talking about. She had never handled so many books in her life before, no matter on which planet, and she basked in the liberty of reading into whatever took her fancy. Astraea had looked up the definition of vacations, and she assured everybody regularly that to her, this was one.

If only things had been equally easy outside of the books.

On this particular day, they were meeting Duffy and a person whom Duffy called her Partner In A Lifetime Liaison for something called brunch. That Lady Bella Derrincourt turned out to be a noblewoman of more than six feet height, with skin of such dark brown that it almost shimmered black, and a deep voice of such calmness that it seemed to quiet down their surroundings when she spoke, did not help in quenching Astraea’s nervousness. She was starting to understand how Jane might have felt when first introduced to court. Astraea had not known that there were still actual aristocrats amongst humans, not just people with titles.

‘The library then,’ Bella nodded, leaning back. ‘Impressive. We were all wondering what would become of the old hut. Personally, I guess, everyone understood the building’s significance and what it means to the city, but all that mess…’

‘We’re staying closed until the worst is sorted out,’ Astraea said, hoping she did not sound rude, or worse, interrupting. ‘Ms Lewis assured that we could leave the library closed for as long as it would take to have a basic system of order put in place.’

‘Mumsy didn’t know that she was putting herself in for several millennia, potentially,’ Duffy smirked. ‘It was before she found out that Astraea’s not from, you know, _here_.’

Astraea’s origins were top secret, so by now the whole town knew, as the occasional stare and whispering prove. It stayed at a jovial level though. The city should have swarmed with journalists and news teams, politicians trying to be the first to settle deals and marketing agencies trying to hire her – or so Jane said – but apparently the place called Common Sense was in possession of qualities rarely found in this galaxy. Even Darcy had admitted that she was not quite sure whether the actual common sense could originate on Earth.

‘Now, I am sure the library is in very capable hands,’ Bella said. ‘But you should not hesitate to say so if you need more than four.’

‘Hands,’ Astraea mouthed in Jane’s direction when Bella turned to the waitress for another cup of tea. Jane had had that slightly lost expression on her face again. She immediately gave Astraea a small nod of understanding. Astraea did not reply, for Bella’s attention had returned to them – quite in contrast to Duffy’s, whose hazy-eyed focus on her partner could not have been disrupted by a horde of bilgesnipe hatchlings smelling freshly dug-out sweetroots.

‘There’s the maintenance of the buildings, too,’ Jane said. ‘We can’t do that alone, there’s workmen who do that.’

‘Most of them happen to be women,’ Astraea explained. She saw Duffy bite back a grin, but chose not to comment on it. Somehow Astraea began to develop the feeling that this was what it was like for Jane in human company.

Although eating with Bella and Duffy was much more relaxing than partaking in the ancient ritual of a full Lewis family dinner, Astraea sensed that Jane was not at ease, a feeling she shared. To Jane it might have been the crowds that scared her, to Astraea it was… well, the crowds. Relaxing, not paying attention to her surroundings, being social, all in the middle of so many people, none of whom she knew, in a world she did not know either. Looking at it like this, her trembles made sense.

Fortunately Duffy had an appointment, giving them a chance to leave quite soon – or maybe it was Duffy who wanted to leave just as badly. She seemed to share a trait or two with Darcy. Astraea had wanted to read up on this condition called autism, but she felt it disrespectful to ask for the books Darcy had left them before Jane had made up her mind about the matter. But no matter how valuable books were in their knowledge, Astraea felt that being with Jane was the better thing. Really the best thing.

‘We’re off then, see you tonight?’ Duffy said.

‘Sorry, no, we’re having dinner at ours,’ Astraea replied. ‘All that food your mother so kindly stocked the refrigerator with needs to be eaten at some point.’

‘Yeah, there’s no escaping the Lewis kitchen…’

‘Why don’t you come around?’ Jane said. ‘We could have a picnic, like, tomorrow?’

‘Lunch would be an option,’ Bella shrugged.

Duffy said, ‘Oh Darling, you’re a genius.’

‘I know.’

Astraea was quite sure that Duffy had just successfully dodged a lunch at her family’s.

They paid for the food, made their goodbyes and set off. It was strange to handle money, not just this strange Earth money that was mostly made of paper, which in itself would have been valuable enough on any other planet. But to buy things, to have to take care of food, where to live, what to wear, it was all so much that Astraea had not quite come to understand how humans managed it all, on top of having jobs and families and the myriads of other things they did with their time. Little wonder that so many of them constantly smelled of stress.

They had talked about this, stress. Jane had told her some things about her time in academics, all the work she had done on top of trying to earn her own money, and a lot of complications about things called scholarships and budgets which Astraea had not quite understood at once, but Jane had said that neither did humans. That even now, she had a habit of stressing herself out, and that they both needed to take care they would not do this with the library, huge as the task was. It was when they had thought about what to do as countermeasures against overworking themselves that Jane had come up with gardening.

The library being situated in an abandoned orchard did not mean that the whole land had been left to wilderness and the occasional stray sheep having a romp. There was a small staircase leading down from their flat’s kitchen, as Astraea had discovered one morning when instead of opening a window, she had suddenly stood in a circle of low murals – she had found that whilst not being a morning person, that stuff called Earl Grey did wonders for her. The staircase discovery had happened before her second cup. Either way, it turned out that they had a kitchen garden, and Jane was eager to have it restored to old beauty.

At the city’s gardening store, they picked up a lot of seeds in small brown paper bags, a handful of tools which they had not been able to find in the library building, as well as a number of plants growing in plastic pots – ‘bring them back, we use them again’, Ms Güdük, the owner, said. She also rented a small cart to them in which they could transport everything at once without having to grow six arms each.

‘They’re really not big on cars here,’ Jane said on their way back. ‘Every store has those little carts.’

‘It’s not as if the distances in this place would justify using a car,’ Astraea said. ‘It’s a practical decision. A lot of common sense.’

‘If you say so…’ Jane said with a little grin.

Astraea, her replying smile still on her face, watched the skies as they walked back the short road to the library. Jane had never once suggested to use Little Feather for transporting their things, and neither had she, Astraea. She could not make out the silhouette of a winged horse against the light clouds, but that was alright. In fact, she was glad that Little Feather stayed away from the town. The steed was much better off in the woods.

They carried the plants and seeds around the building to where the gardens lay, but that was where Astraea’s journey ended.

‘Honestly, it’s okay!’ Jane insisted. ‘I can take care of this. And we don’t need lunch so early today, so I can get the garden done before that, too, and I’ll clean up later. You can go back to your books.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

Jane had done most of the housework since they had arrived, much to Astraea’s discomfort. True, she had never learnt how to do most of the tasks, but they did not look that difficult. Quite on the contrary, Astraea was sure that cleaning and cooking ranged on the more boring, tedious end of the scale, yet requiring a good amount of physical strength – which she had, on top of endurance. While the rest of the library was regularly dusted and swiped by a professional service, Astraea would have preferred to help Jane with the flat. Her friend looked so uncomfortable at the very notion though that Astraea did not dare to argue more than once.

Back to her books then. She had wished for this, had she not? And here they were, all of them, like new friends who already felt as if they had known each other for millennia once she had taken them into her hand for the first time. It was amazing how humans could live within all this, and never once realise the treasure that surrounded them. On the other hand, Jane still kept babbling about the floating toy she had seen once, a simple mechanism of repulsion energy in a handful of scrap metal.

She groaned, forcing all her willpower against the urge of slamming her head against the table in front of her. It would have broken the fragile construction. This was the reason, wasn’t it? That she, Astraea, had all this, that she had finally found it – but nobody else could see what she saw. She had nobody to share.

She was alone. Again.

* * *

Dinner was a quiet ceremony that night. Usually they ate with the Lewises, and tonight, for the first time, Astraea would have preferred that arrangement. She had neither the power to bear the silence in the kitchen, nor the strength to break it.

She had to give it to Jane, the food on their table tended to be tasty as well as nutritious, even for Earth standards. Asking Jane where she had learned to cook would have been a way to start a conversation, but even that seemed too much tonight. They ate their vegetable soup in silence.

The dishwasher stood fully loaded and waiting to be switched on when the doorbell rang. Not the official front entrance, but a small door at the side of the building, easier to reach than the far-off main hall. They had never heard this sound since the first day they had seen the flat, when Ms Lewis had demonstrated it to them. Astraea looked at Jane, whose pulse was suddenly audible in the room. They both ran.

A short figure stood under the porch, wrapped in thick layers of clothes despite the relative warmth of the weather which even Astraea felt. She did not recognise the woman.

Jane did, if her gasp was anything to go by.

‘Hello, sweetie pie,’ the woman smiled.

Her eyes adjusting to the gloom, Astraea finally realised what upset her so much about the woman: not just did she smell weak, she also had no eyebrows, and no hair peeked out from underneath the scarf wound tightly around her head. Smooth as silk, the face below the scarf looked just as thin as the fabric, sunken cheeks of a greenish grey, with even darker shadows underneath the eyes. This woman was ill, she was sure. One of those vicious diseases humans fell to so easily.

Astraea was about to push Jane back into the relative safety of the building, least she caught anything of the stranger, when Jane whispered:

‘Mom!’


	13. Chapter 13

‘Are you comfortable, is the tea okay? Not too hot?’ Jane asked, feeling stupid. They were all sitting in the spacious living room, with the lights turned to low so the sight of the ocean outside did not get blocked by reflections. It was far too gloomy for comfort, and tea, well, tea was tea.

‘Perfectly, thank you, dear. No need to make such a fuss though,’ her mother said.

‘No need? _No need_? You come here telling me you’ve had chemotherapy and I’m not supposed to make a fuss about you?’ She realised that she was yelling down at her mother. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. But really –‘

‘But I am fine!’ her Mom insisted. ‘It’s all done and other with. Breast cancer is perfectly treatable if detected early, and I was lucky. Always go to your check-ups though,’ she said to Astraea, who looked bemused, if any more of this was possible.

Jane let herself drop into an armchair, leaving the sofa to Astraea for personal space. She craved a cup of coffee, a fancy one with all that milk stuffs and syrups like they sold them at the shops. At least there was tea.

‘So, how do you like Earth?’ her mother said to Astraea. ‘I bet the food’s a disappointment.’

‘It is nice,’ Astraea said, bless her.

‘Mom, honestly, what is all this?’ Jane interrupted. She had always been greedy for her mother’s attention, she knew that, but as of now she felt she had a right to be.

‘Well, I’m visiting you,’ Philomena Foster said as if it were the most natural thing in the world to jet around half the globe just having finished cancer treatment. Or maybe it was, for ordinary people. Jane’s mother was not ordinary.

‘Wouldn’t it be better if you’d rest, you know?’

‘It’s what I’m doing.’ When Jane looked at her mother questioningly, she continued, ‘The doctors said that I’ve been doing too much during the last years. That I should take a vacation. Here I am,’ she smiled.

Jane was quite sure to miss something. She hated it. Darcy was not here to translate, she had to take make sure Astraea was alright, and now this – it was too much. As if it wasn’t enough that she had just lost the whole world of her own from underneath her feet, all the rest just kept getting re-juggled about every ten minutes.

‘Where’s your luggage?’ she finally asked. It was as much as she could handle to get out.

‘At Leyla’s, I’m staying with them,’ her mother had the nerve to beam.

‘That’s out of question, it’s far too noisy there –‘

‘It is not, and I told you to stop fussing!’ Philomena said, raising her voice for the first time. ‘They are very nice people, I will be in the best hands. And if there was an emergency, which won’t be the case, it is not as if Leyla had no experience with nursing, with a family like that. You have so much to do here, I’d just be in the way.’

Sadly there was nothing logical Jane could bring up against that. Not on the spot, anyhow. Why couldn’t one get preparation time for talks like this?

‘But you’re not going back there on your own tonight,’ she said. ‘We have a guest room –‘

‘Leyla is fetching me, she will be here any minute,’ her mother smiled again. Then a phone rang. ‘Ah – that will be her. Always on time.’

‘Take care’ was the last thing Jane was able to call after her mother before she vanished into the night, surrounded by five Lewis women who all chattered like a cloud of magpies. Left with the oh so familiar feeling of once again and forever having failed to hold enough attention to get anywhere close to her mother, Jane closed the door and turned to go back to her flat – only to face a wide-eyed Astraea.

‘Sorry,’ Jane said. ‘That was my Mom. She’s always that way, never staying long anywhere.’

‘She was sick?’ Astraea asked carefully when they went back to the flat. Right. Diseases were fairly unknown where she came from.

‘Cancer, yes. It’s not technically a disease, you can’t catch it like a virus, it’s a malfunction of the human body. Ordinary cells suddenly start to mutate and grow in the wrong ways… I’m not an expert. It’s a serious thing, but in some cases it can be healed.’

‘She said she had been healed.’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said, ‘I hope it’s true.’

They went to bed quietly, later that night. Astraea did not even read anything, which would have unsettled Jane had she not been so upset already. All she wished for was the blessing of deep, dreamless slumber. Preferably followed by the morning realisation that everything was a particularly nasty nightmare, and she was still on her road to science. Oh dear. Not that thought, she had had it locked up so nice and safe all the time.

It turned out such a nasty thought that it blocked Jane’s mind for quite a while after they had turned down the lights. So much indeed that only after having dealt with it did she notice that someone in the room was sobbing, and another ten seconds to check if it was her. Negative.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. Astraea had not cried again after they had started sharing a room. Jane had hoped that being lady of a library would help her over her homesickness.

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Astraea said. Her voice was hoarse, but it started to actually fail when she added: ‘You said it wasn’t a disease and that it doesn’t spread. I’ve looked it up.’

Jane stared at her friend, flabbergasted at the amount of accusation she thought to notice in those sentences. ‘Uhm. Yeah.’

‘It’s hereditary!’ Astraea blurted out, followed by more sobs. ‘And if your mother has it –‘

‘ _Had_ it,’ Jane said. ‘And there’s a chance I might get it one day, but no certainty. And there’s check-ups and we don’t even know if until then they’ve found a cure and – why would you be crying?’

Great, now she felt guilty without knowing what about. Astraea grunted in frustration, her tears not stopping.

‘Listen, I’ll be around for a while longer, okay?’ Jane said. ‘I’ll schedule my next check-up right tomorrow. And anyway, you shouldn’t worry, I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna live even closely as long as you do –‘

‘Will you stop being horrible!’ Astraea yelled with the full strength of a warrior of nine centuries.

Jane volunteered to spend the rest of the night on the living room sofa.

* * *

‘The _sofa_?’ Darcy snorted.

Astraea quickly let her eyes wander over the room to check if any of the ladies present were listening in on them. Futile, she was sure. Centuries in Her Majesty’s service had taught Astraea that noblewomen did nothing as well as keeping their ears fine-tuned.

‘Is the sofa significant?’ she asked as quietly as possible, trying to suppress the tremor in her voice. She had always prided herself on a spotless reputation of unshakable coldness of character at court. This would not be the day to part with the privilege of fifty royal guards shuddering at the sound of her boots on the entranceway of the training grounds.

Darcy seemed to have noticed her opposite’s concerns, for she quickly bit back her grin and said in a nonchalant voice, ‘Not at all. Nothing we can’t talk about on another day. Oh, look at this… I wanted to show you this book, but it’s a bit murky over here. Why don’t we go outside?’

‘As you wish,’ Astraea said gratefully. She bowed to the queen as they left the suite for the large terrace outside. Darcy, her status as princess-to-be now officially confirmed, left it at a curtsy.

She looked fine, the Lady Darcy. The dresses had been tailored to fit her, her hair and skin glowed in the sunshine, but that alone did not render Darcy a princess. She herself had changed, had moulded her gait into an easy float, her voice to a velvety murmur, her expressions reserved and balmy. Only when they had rounded the pillars that shielded them from view, with the wind so high above the ground making it impossible to hear what they said, did Darcy’s mask shift to reveal the face of the Lewis daughter.

‘Where I come from,’ she said, ‘when a husband’s been an ass, and the wife has anything to say in her household, he sleeps on the sofa.’

‘I see,’ Astraea said. Then the thought sank in. ‘Oh. _Oh_ …’

‘Yeah, she’s an original, our Jane,’ Darcy sighed.  
‘And I was wondering why she didn’t just sleep in her room.’ She hesitated. ‘Or, you know, just stay.’

‘Sorry,’ Darcy grinned, then quickly biting her lip as if she had just discovered a particularly rich piece of cake right in front of her. ‘It’s just so sweet that you’re, uhm, sharing a room.’

Astraea chose not to reply. At first she had not seen why Darcy would react so amused at the news. Then she had realised what it sounded like.

‘I’ve – it’s – I don’t exactly have – I’ve always lived in my room. On my own. I’ve never shared before. So I don’t know…’

Darcy quickly held up her hands. ‘Hey, this is between you and Jane. I’m silly, and I’m really sorry, it’s not my business, and whatever makes you happy – it’s just so cute. Sorry.’

Astraea exhaled deeply, then used a handy gust of wind as an excuse to push her hair out of her face, where it had never been. ‘I did not realise before,’ she finally said, ‘that living with humans means… I’m living with Jane now, but how long can that last at best? Fifty years, sixty if we’re lucky?’

Given that Jane wanted to stay with her in the first place.

‘I know,’ Darcy said so quietly that Astraea guessed the words more than she could hear them. ‘I understand. Now, I mean.’

The shadow of a gigantic pair of wings that swept over the terrace broke the moment. Out of habit, Astraea waved. Little Feather flew a graceful curve and then landed effortlessly on the platform, coming to a halt with no more than two extra steps. The horse stretched forward its head to nuzzle the hand that might just hold a treat. It did not.

* * *

‘Awful thunderstorm coming up, not that you’d be surprised,’ Duffy had winked when they had said goodbye to each other after the picnic.

‘Bad taste, my dear,’ Bella had said, saving Jane from having to reply. ‘And send our regards to Astraea, will you?’

‘Of course,’ Jane had nodded gratefully. ‘Say hi to my Mum.’

‘Sure, if we can interrupt her and Mom for a second from their endless talks about hydrangeas.’

Jane had prayed to be on her own again. Once she was, only her lack of energy kept her from phoning Duffy right away and beg her and Bella to come back.

She had a last look at the sky in the hope of seeing the familiar pattern of an Einstein-Rosen-bridge forming in the clouds, but no such luck. The weather forecast had been correct. Half an hour after the picnic, the sky turned a solid anthracite and the rain began to pour. Hopefully Darcy had the weather app on her phone up to date. Jane had never asked how Darcy had made it work in space.

Jane couldn’t admit that she had not been relieved about Astraea’s sudden trip to her home planetoid. Talking to Darcy, she had said. As much as Jane wished Astraea back, wished this thing between them was resolved and out of the world, just as much did she fear the encounter. She’d never been good at this. This was the standard Jane Foster Queen Of Awkward situation in which most of her relationships had ended. This wasn’t about a relationship though, it was much more. This was about friendship.

Not knowing what else she could do, Jane sat down by the windows. The storm raged over the sea, not so much touching the coast except for strong rain. She could not see far, but even if that had been the case, Jane would not have noticed much more around her.

When the vortex of colours appeared, her heartbeat became so loud that it seemed to drown out the storm. There – there she was, the little winged speck flying out of the cloud and toward the woods. Jane ran onto the terrace, out into the rain. It soaked her the very moment she stepped out. The horse in the sky became discernable, its silhouette growing in the flashes of the lightning from behind. Jane waved when she could make out Astraea. Little Feather came closer and closer, reached the house – and sped on, above Jane’s head, into the rains above the cliffs.

Gone.


	14. Chapter 14

She was so sweet, her Jane. It had been a long ride, about an hour in human time, and yet she had waited at the window for Astraea to come home. Once inside the flat, Astraea found herself wrapped into towels and had to insist very hard not to end up in the bathtub right away.

‘It’s fine, really!’ Astraea laughed when Jane had offered her tea, microwave cake, soup, hugs, sandwiches, more tea, and a full report of the picnic including all of the leftovers. ‘I can’t catch colds, remember?’

‘Yeah, but… is everything okay?’ Jane asked, her eyes so large that their usual shade of mahogany became cast with amber in the bright lights of the living room.

Astraea was about to say ‘sure’, the way she had been taught, but then stopped. Jane had told her that once when she had been asked how she was, she had put that person on the phone with her mother to receive the full biology report of how Jane Foster had come into being. ‘Needed some time to think,’ Astraea said instead. ‘Feeling better though. Wetter,’ she added with a grin that took a lot of strength.

Evading to her bedroom for a change of clothes saved Astraea both from Jane’s attention and freezing on the spot. On Little Feather’s back she had not even noticed the cruel temperature of the rain. Everything was easier in the saddle, with only four hooves and two wings to focus on.

A sudden cool breeze made her gnash her teeth. This was the trouble with old buildings, she had heard from quite everyone she had met in Common Sense so far: draughts all the time. She frowned. This did feel like an open window. Jane had even turned up the heating for her, why would she allow the weather in again?

It was very, very difficult not to fall right back into stealth approach. Everything in Astraea screamed at her to tiptoe into the kitchen, access the veranda, and crawl over to the living room windows to assess the situation. If someone had entered their flat, they would not see her coming that way.

But she was not a guard anymore. She was a librarian now, wasn’t she? Librarians did not parcour over verandas, they used doors.

She was more than relieved about having listened to her love for literature when she saw who their visitor was.

‘Hi!’ Darcy said with an apologetic grin. ‘Sorry… do you mind a dinner guest?’

* * *

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. That taking up the job of queen-to-be had would come with a lot of consequences had been obvious to Darcy, but not that she would be required to save several worlds at once twenty-six hours a day, or whatever it was on the planet she visited at the given moment. She would have loved to ask someone for a bit of help once in a while, but with everyone in constant trouble, that seemed a futile idea. Sure, Frigga helped with the detail of Darcy’s new position, but the old queen had enough problems herself, most of which Darcy would not ask. She did not need any more nightmares about the future. Other people would have suggested asking her mother, but Darcy Lewis knew better.

‘Is everything okay?’ Jane asked.

‘Yes, sure, uhm… just wanted to check if you’re okay,’ Darcy said. ‘You okay?’

‘I… think so?’

Jane turned to Astraea, who had just entered the salon. Even clad in a threadbare pair of jeans and one of Jane’s insufferable flannel shirts, she looked every inch the proud lady of the place, immediately making Darcy nervously check her own hair. Maybe she could ask Astraea for lessons… the job of head librarian could not have gone to a more capable person, that had never been in doubt.

‘Well… do you mind if I come in? My butt’s getting rained on.’

Darcy’s words broke the spell. Astraea strode to the window and closed it while Jane ran over to the doors open to the kitchen for starting the kettle. Darcy would have preferred a blanket or a nice big sweatshirt to pull over her dress, but such were scientists for you.

‘Do you want to take a bath?’ Jane asked, much to Darcy’s chagrin over having her fresh genius snark contradicted.

‘Please do her the favour,’ Astraea said with a hint of mischief on the corner of her lips, ‘she has no power over me, but you are still very much capable of catching a good sneeze.’

‘Kermit beware,’ Darcy said.

Jane snarled, ‘Very much so, because you’d have the choice between your mother or me nursing you back to health.’

‘And no champion of any world would free you, if they know what’s good for them,’ Astraea grinned.

The princess of nine worlds chose not to reply to that.

She finally received her cup of tea, after having been ushered to a truly magnificent set of sofas in the middle of the living room, equipped with the fluffiest cushions and blankets Darcy could have wished for. In contrast to her one home, there wasn’t a single cat hair in sight nor did she have to fear the sinkhole in that one sofa you never saw before your behinds had plummeted into it, and in contrast to her other home, things were just ever so soft and padded. What a sofa to stay on…

‘Can I hog your sofa tonight?’

Astraea and Jane exchanged surprised looks.

‘Is everything okay?’ Astraea asked. They had only met, what, two hours ago? On the other hand, a lot could happen in that time.

‘Sure,’ Darcy shrugged. ‘Just… it’s so comfy…’ She finally gave in to the urge of letting herself sink into the biggest cushion of them all. Heaven. She was in heaven.

‘Intern, what’s wrong?’

She flinched at the sudden sharpness in Jane’s voice.

‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a bit tired.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m about to become the queen of fucking everything, that’s why!’ Darcy growled. Then sighed. ‘Sorry. As I said, tired.’

Someone plunged onto the sofa next to her. As Darcy did not feel the sensation of being propelled into the air, it could only be Jane.

‘I know you, intern. You have been mastering finals, thesis preparation and my Nobel Prize PR single-handedly and still had enough time for Netflix binges. You’ve never been tired before.’

‘I’m getting old.’

‘Is that why you keep coming back?’

Darcy looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

Astraea took over. ‘You are about to become queen of a whole world, and yet you spend every night on this planet. If you do not mind the question – is this of your own volition, or are you being sent?’

Snapping back would have felt great, but it took too much energy Darcy did not have. ‘Being sent,’ she gave in. ‘By the healers. I couldn’t sleep, they said I should come back to sleep here.’

‘And it has not helped.’

‘You’ve seen my family’s house,’ Darcy gave back. She could have explained that she had to share her room with Aunt Pringles now, whose nickname was entirely intentional, that it was raining through the roof in one corner, and the Elder Twins had turned half her bed into a storage space for their comic book collection (the cheap years only). She could also have added that the whole family used to be up by sunrise because that was when the parrot woke, that the last functional toaster had kicked the bucket months ago, and for some reason the only television set on second floor only ever played Spongebob Squarepants. She might have mentioned that she would have given a lot for a quiet five minutes with her Earthly relatives, and not just because everybody was anxious for the last question on How To Become A Millionaire. A recording of 2005, no less.

She did not, however. Maybe the reason was that Jane had put an arm around Darcy’s shoulders, and those darned tears were coming up again. Her boss had the unnerving habit of being blind for masks, applied in whichever amount.

‘You don’t have to sleep on the couch, there’s a guest room.’

‘Can’t move,’ Darcy mumbled. This place was far too perfect anyway. Maybe she could make this sofa her home, with a throne of cushions from which to rule the whole galaxy… was this how super-villain stories began?

‘Anyway,’ she said, sitting up with a groan, ‘I’ve come to the decision that you two need a hobby.’

She found Jane staring at her. A quick gaze at Astraea made sure that Darcy wouldn’t suddenly find pointy things flying in her direction, but the warrior looked as flabbergasted as her housemate.

‘Context?’ asked Jane.

‘I’ve thought about you two, and I don’t see much of a bond between you, which isn’t much of a surprise because you work all day and sleep all night,’ Darcy recounted the little list in her head she had prepared in advance. ‘You need to do things you enjoy, and if you do them together, all the better. I know you’re hopeless on hobbies, boss, but I’m sure you’re interested in finding out what else can be done on Earth,’ Darcy nodded at Astraea.

Astraea shrugged. ‘Learning more about humans can’t hurt.’

‘You’re planning something, what are you planning?’

Damn. When it came to finding her way around a supermarket, Doctor Jane Foster was a hopeless case (except for finding cereal and science fiction novels, those things she could sniff out amongst a medium-size fish market), but once in a while her gaze pierced Darcy’s soul leaving nothing hidden. Well, except for that story of where the extra large tub of dark chocolate ice cream had vanished to last summer. Darcy wasn’t entirely defenceless.

‘Not telling you.’

‘Darcy…’

She sat up fully. ‘It’s just an idea, it’s nothing that’s gonna happen any time soon, should it ever be possible. Maybe it’s not, and it wouldn’t be good to talk about it now, okay? But you two really need to work on your relationship, whatever kind of a relationship that is. Unless you’re seeing this as a temporary thing. But even then, you should make the best of it. ‘Cause, you know, temporary… means different things to all of us.’

Astraea took a sharp breath. At least someone in the room was able to catch Darcy’s meaning. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Only the things I said.’

‘Jane?’ Astraea asked. For a moment Darcy felt almost a little sorry. She had not intended to make this so difficult for the two of them, but then, maybe there was no easy way.

‘What?’

‘What I’ve been thinking about – before… it was because humans only live for –‘

‘About a hundred years at most, yes,’ Jane completed the sentence. ‘I’m not having this conversation for the first time.’

‘But the options are different,’ Darcy quickly interrupted.

Astraea and Jane both looked at her.

‘What?’

‘You know, this process, where they change my DNA so I live for five thousand Earth years? Well, four thousand, given the aging process…’

Jane’s jaw clenched.

‘What about it?’

Darcy took a deep breath.

‘I’m trying to get that favour extended to others.’

Jane’s eyes narrowed.

‘And how many extensions could that include, practically?’


	15. Chapter 15

‘That doesn’t go there,’ Philomena said. Jane grumbled her agreement and stopped trying to fit the soup pot into the cutlery drawer.

She had tried all night to make sense of Darcy’s words, and what they could mean, for all of them. It had been another early, quiet night, although Darcy had suggested that they watch a re-run of Doctor Who on television. Jane had little objections, but Astraea had voiced her distress about some of the depicted views on alien species. With Darcy in the living room, Astraea and Jane had shared their room again, and it had felt consoling, a little. Whatever the consoling was about.

As if the future queen of the nebula and everything on the sofa wasn’t enough of a stressful visitor, Philomena had announced herself on the doorstep of the side entrance as of this morning. My, had that been a fun breakfast: Astraea glancing wishfully at the book she had been reading until the kettle’s whistling, Jane watching her cornflakes turn into disgruntled starch molecules, Darcy shoving toast and eggs into her mouth whilst complaining about the food quality of several planets at once, and Philomena arranging the foodstuffs on her plate in order of colour, density, and age of cultivation. Maybe she had merely been sketching a new painting though, one never knew.

Now, however, Philomena Foster had taken over control of the wash-up. Jane assisted her in a last attempt of power struggling, while Darcy and Astraea in extraterrestrial wisdom had cleared to the terrace.

‘You know we have a dishwasher?’ Jane said for the third time this morning.

‘I do,’ her mother said, ‘you have told me twice already.’ She handed Jane a freshly cleaned plate. ‘A dishwasher doesn’t give me the chance to have a long overdue talk with my daughter though.’

‘Colour me thrilled.’

Philomena grinned. ‘Well, a mother has to make sure her daughter is happy.’

‘Did you find that in your horoscope this morning?’ Jane snarled, propelling the dried plate into the cupboard. The plate, having survived at least seven decades of library moods by the looks of it, was not to be impressed by a grumpy librarian-in-self-training. The stack it landed on did not even tremble. Great, even the dishes had better nerves than Jane.

‘No,’ her mother said, ‘but I think it is time we had this talk.’

Jane rolled her eyes. There was no way to avoid it. ‘What talk?’ She hoped that this wasn’t about, well, _that_ topic. If Philomena hadn’t understood by now that her daughter had discussed the correlation between blossoming botany and the common honey bee with members of two species, none of which she had enjoyed in particular, then Jane certainly would not continue this discussion. She had three academic degrees too much for this nonsense.

‘The talk about what you think to do with your life, of course.’

‘That’s even worse!’

‘Worse than what?’

Jane quickly shut her mouth, then opened it again to press out ‘Stuff. Anyway. I don’t want to discuss this.’

‘I know, it’s why you’re hiding behind dirty dishes and your librarian friend.’

‘I’m a librarian, too!’

‘Are you? Because as far as I know, you’re cleaning and Astraea is library- libra- librarying.’

Jane straightened up to stare into her mother’s face. It was difficult, not only because she was not used to people being shorter than her, but also because Philomena looked so different. To begin with, about half of her body mass had vanished with the cancer, and what remained of her seemed to have been reduced to the essence of everything that had been there before.

‘Well, I can’t let Astraea do housework, can I? That’d be so inappropriate.’

‘I thought you were roommates.’

‘We are.’ Jane crossed her arms. It was pathetic, but it was all three academic degrees had taught her for this type of situation.

‘Then why is it that you decide who does what?’

‘Because – I don’t!’

Except she did, and that big black hole – not the juicy astrophysical ones, but the very terrestrial, psychological specimen – which opened up right over her head in that precise moment prove it. She was bossing around Astraea, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t be the first time, except Jane was no boss here, and this wasn’t Darcy, who saw this sort of thing as a challenge.

It was Darcy, however, who saved Jane for the moment by coming back from outside. It had started to rain again, as Jane saw now, so she quickly stepped aside to make space for Astraea. Being the only person unable to catch a cold did not make being uncomfortable acceptable.

‘No tea?’ was Darcy’s comment on the situation.

‘If you make some,’ Jane gave back. Her ways weren’t all wrong, were they? What was wrong about gripping her own life, just for once, and behaving like a responsible person?

_That you’re taking other people’s responsibility without asking, Foster. That’s what’s wrong_ , the voice in her head said. _And stop thinking about how to spell ‘responsibility’._

‘You sure you don’t want to stay here?’ Jane said to nobody in particular. At her luck, both her mother and Darcy would say yes. Philomena took the cue:

‘Actually, no, I’m very comfortable at Leyla’s,’ she said.

‘It stopped being my Dad’s house after he discovered that he could play indoor golf at his office,’ Darcy shrugged.

Philomena showed herself unimpressed by the interruption. ‘I’m sharing a room with three of the cats, so thoughtful! They really like snuggling up to me at night, no need for electric blankets whatsoever.’

‘Mom’s charms as a host are innumerable,’ came another comment from Darcy.

Jane ignored her. It was a habit. ‘Have you found a doctor yet,’ she asked her mother, ‘to look after you?’

‘Sure, they can all look after me when I run my next marathon,’ Philomena grinned. ‘Or wave after me, if they can keep up.’

‘You don’t run marathons.’

‘I haven’t yet, but that’s gonna change. There’s free food if you finish!’

‘How about we have some tea on the terrace?’ Astraea’s voice cut in. Jane had many reasons for being grateful to her flatmate, but her ability to bring down unpleasant talk she had been ignored in couldn’t be beaten in any ranking. Not to mention that they didn’t have a terrace, so tea on the walkway outside would not just result in an interesting, linear sitting order bound to stop any conversation whatsoever, but also in rather cold and thinned-down tea, given that it was pouring now.

‘Or I show Philomena the library,’ Darcy said. Jane’s ears twitched. That tone in Darcy’s voice suggested that Darcy wanted to indicate something very different, Jane had learnt – from a full-evening briefing her intern had given her, including a Power Point Presentation and fact sheets. Jane still owned those.

‘Don’t get lost between botany and geography,’ Astraea nodded. Darcy nodded back. Jane felt her ears wiggle themselves into pretzel shape – there was no botany section, not to mention geography, of all things! Oh. Apparently Astraea did not need fact sheets about conversation.

‘I plan to take the full route all around the lake and everything,’ Darcy said when she and Philomena stood at the flat’s exit door. ‘Don’t wait with lunch. If we get hungry, I get credit at Hassan’s bistro.’

‘Hassan’s bistro is at the other end of town,’ Jane frowned.

‘And you’re underestimating the library labyrinth,’ Darcy smirked. Humming ‘Magic Dance’, she took Philomena’s hand and vanished into the gloomy corridor.

‘Is Darcy wearing your bathrobe?’ Astraea asked Jane.

‘Don’t say you’re surprised.’

‘Don’t expect it back.’

‘I don’t.’

Astraea carefully closed the door, as if in fear that the bathrobe might return to haunt them – a possibility Jane would not rule out in this place – and turned her back to it, looking at her flatmate.

‘Do you think we should –‘ Jane started.

‘Would you mind a talk?’ Astraea said.

Jane’s shoulders dropped in relief. At least this was easy. ‘I wouldn’t mind that at all, no.’

In a by-now routine move, Astraea went into the kitchen to prepare the teapot, while Jane trod after her to set up the kettle.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this,’ Astraea said, nodding at her surroundings. ‘I think we should organise better.’

‘I’m sorry, really,’ Jane said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you what to do. I mean –‘

‘A chore schedule should help organise the household tasks, and if that works out, I would like to apply the method to our library work, too.’

Jane quickly nodded, not quite sure if what numbed her was more relief or more shame.

‘Even if we continue to catalogue the books for months, I don’t think that we will manage to file all titles, and that doesn’t include the re-sorting, for which we have no system either. So what I think we should do, if you think so, too, is to think about all these questions and make a plan and then find help to get it all done. I think that’s what librarians do.’ Astraea paused. ‘I’ve said think too much and now it’s awkward. Why is there only one word for it in your language?’

Chuckling against her will, Jane left it at a shrug. ‘You really got a plan there,’ she said. ‘What can I do?’

She had not thought it possible, not from Astraea – gentle, sensitive Astraea – but it happened: the first time that Astraea looked angry. Truly, openly annoyed.

‘Enough with this. We do this together, or we do not do it at all, and I mean that with all consequences.’

Jane froze on the spot, teacup half-raised. ‘Pardon?’ she said, only half-aware of the frost in her own voice.

Astraea shrugged. ‘I’m not doing all the work for you. You might think you can hide behind your broomsticks and dust cloths, but I’m several centuries too old to fall for that sort of trick. You work in the library, or you look for somewhere else to hide.’

Something stirred in Jane, something she had not felt for ages. Biting, slowly burning its way up her rips and straight into her centre. Anger, pure and powerful, like a freshly loaded battery, a whole drawer full of spoons.

‘Oh yeah?’ Jane snapped. ‘Oh yeah!’ She hesitated, unable to think of anything else to say. Astraea was right, of course she was right, and it made Jane so angry. ‘Yeah!’ she shouted again, just because that was better than nothing at all, and who knew when there’d be fresh batteries again? ‘Yeah!’

Astraea said nothing, simply raising a brow.

‘I mean – yeah, you’re right. This sucks!’ Jane thumped the teacup onto the counter, spilling most of the precious liquid, not improving her mood. ‘I don’t care about cleaning, I wanna work with the books!’

‘Then do it!’ Astraea replied with a disbelieving chuckle.

‘I will! That is – will you? With me?’ Just when that had been going so great, Jane felt her voice fail.

There it was again, Astraea’s wonderful, quiet little smile. ‘We both?’ she asked, sincerely.

‘Yeah!’ Jane said, trying not to giggle at her terrible parody of herself. It made Astraea laugh though, who repeated ‘Yeah!’ until they both stood doubled over with laughter.

It was a most inappropriate ringtone that brought them back to themselves.

‘Must be Darcy’s,’ Astraea said.

‘Should we answer?’ Jane asked. ‘She’s a princess and all…’

Astraea, who had found Darcy’s phone on the kitchen table, quickly pushed it to Jane. ‘Not me!’

‘Me neither!’ Jane said, but she knew she had already lost. Clumsily she picked up the smartphone, praying that it would just stop ringing, but no such luck.

‘Hello?’ she said. Listened. Listened a little more. Then dropped the phone back onto the table as if it were about to bite her ear, which probably was not out of the range of possibility.

‘Who was it?’ Astraea asked cautiously.

‘Loki,’ Jane shrugged. ‘Sounds like Darcy has given him a kitten for company.’

Astraea slowly shook her head. ‘Taming her greatest risk by training empathy. She will make a remarkable queen.’

‘Not one who cares about animal rights,’ Jane growled.

Sipping her tea coolly, Astraea said, ‘I’ve met cats. He doesn’t stand a chance.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait. There's just no time, there's just always something, so to say. I'm afraid this chapter isn't quite what I wanted it to be, but I didn't want to let you, if you're still there, wait even longer.


	16. Chapter 16

‘To Darcy!’ everyone intoned. ‘And to what an exaggerated love for everything Disney can end up in,’ Duffy added.

They were all sitting in the Lewis salon, even bigger than the kitchen, or maybe it only looked that way for the relative lack of clutter. Astraea had been told that this room was saved for special occasions, such as holiday festivities, spelling contests, and the odd family daughter becoming heiress to a space-wide kingdom.

It had been a splendid ceremony, especially given that there was no historic precedent for a princess being adopted. They had managed to cover up for the old king’s increasing inability to know where he was by cutting the speeches mercifully short, and starting the party sensibly early, as Darcy had expressed it. After being welcomed by her new parents, the princess had disappeared in a throng of noblepeople, and they had hardly seen her again except from afar, whenever Darcy was trying to get to the buffet and find the time to actually chew.

‘Gosh, I haven’t been this full since last Tuesday,’ one of the younger twins said. Astraea could not keep them apart, but apparently that was normal for everyone.

Feeling the need to apologise, she said, ‘Well, our food tends to be more rich. It has to do with –‘

‘Metabolism speed, yup,’ Duffy interrupted, looking half-asleep as she lay sprawled all over a chair of her own. Lady Bella had not been able to make it, a dire family matter, she had said. Duffy had spent most of the day consoling her girlfriend on the phone. ‘Do me a favour, stop apologising. That food you have up there is _amazing_.’

Astraea gave her a grateful grin, which Duffy replied to with a wink.

‘Come to speak of it,’ one of the aunts – a middle-aged woman named Ying, Astraea remembered – stood up and said, ‘wasn’t there some cheesecake in the fridge?’

Within two seconds, the family was back up on their feet.

‘They’re unbelievable…’ Duffy sighed, her eyes now closed completely.

Astraea chuckled. ‘Proof that our species are not as different as we believe them to be.’ She straightened up. Despite Leyla’s continuous orders to sit down, Astraea had stood her ground in the very essence of the idiom’s meaning. She was not off duty yet. ‘Well then. As everyone seems fine, or at least not threatened by anything a stomach medicine could not cure, I shall be off.’

‘Thanks for taking care of our princess,’ Duffy said sleepily.

‘My pleasure. I’ll pass it on to Jane.’

‘Nah, this one’s just for you.’

‘Okay,’ Astraea smirked as she left Duffy to her dreams and walked out of the living room.

It was a weekday and therefore blissfully quiet when she stepped out onto the pavement. At least three twins and several of Darcy’s younger cousins had taken pains to scrawl colourful chalk congratulations for their relative onto the plaster stones in front of the house, making sure nobody stepped on them so that ‘the aliens could see them from space’. It had ended up in everyone having to hobble over the grass, which was more of a building site for moles, and climb over a wobbly bit of garden fence. Astraea had offered to help the more elderly guests, but Duffy had insisted on charging a fee, and suddenly everyone had shown impressive athletic agility.

She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath of pure, salty night air. Where Astraea went next, the party would be much more noisy. At least in this aspect, she shared a mind with Jane: it took practice to be social, and not a practice that was as much fun as a good, hard workout in the woods, all on her own – well, not quite what Jane would have said. Astraea looked quite forward to the coming morning.

The rainbow maelstrom built up around her, a beautifully effective way of travelling, she had always found. She loved the pull, the speed, and just when it was sadly over, one last big jump she rode to the full, landing on her feet as if she had been born with wings, too.

‘Good evening,’ she grinned at the gatekeeper, her face still hot from the excitement.

‘And a good evening to you again,’ he smirked back.

‘I’m sorry for keeping you waiting. Hold on…’ Astraea rummaged in the small backpack she had brought, a remarkable human invention that left her hands free, the luggage secure, and stored at the point of her body where she did not even notice any additional weight. ‘Here’s your cheesecake. I hope there’s no cat hair on, I had to be quick before anyone noticed.’

‘Splendid,’ the gatekeeper said, his eyes shining even more than usual as he carefully took the parcel. ‘I shall be calling it a night then,’ he added, ‘and do not think of trying to find me early on the morrow. Palace feasts are for everyone.’

‘I would not think of such a thing,’ Astraea grinned.

Around them the lights of the observatory dimmed to a peaceful glow as they left the structure. From the coast, the city’s flickering lights illuminated the music and the hubbub of hundreds of people celebrating together. A flying boat was waiting at the bridge, its five passengers joking loudly at each other.

‘Would you like a ride?’ the gatekeeper asked. ‘We are going to the very heart of the city.’

‘No, thank you,’ Astraea shook her head and smiled. ‘I’m taking the long road.’

‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘Do remember that part of tonight’s duty is also to enjoy yourself!’

She waved him off with a chuckle as the boat gained height and sped past her. Always considerate, this man. She had made very, very sure to find a good piece of cheesecake.

The walk to the palace did not take long, and once the gates lay behind her, it was as if her feet found their way on their own. It was a strange feeling, walking these corridors like those hundreds of thousands of times before, and yet the first time as someone who did not live here anymore. Someone different: someone with a name.

These were not the gleaming walls of the upper floors, the halls so large their ceilings could only be reached by flying. These were the narrow walkways and small chambers in which the palace was run, dark and cosy, a network of home, the beehive, as they called it not without affection. Storage rooms of all kinds, the kitchens in another wing, the quarters for the servants, the planning rooms, the archives, the portals and the meeting rooms. On every level, in regular intervals, the guard rooms.

This had been her place, at least for those three hundred years it had taken to work her way up from apprentice to guard to special position to personal attendant. This corridor, the one with the small window at the end, and to the left, the door to her room. Astraea stopped. Was she really here?

Her throat clenched. What was she doing here, except wasting time? She had promised Darcy and Jane to be back as soon as she could. The room had been given to someone else now, they would not waste space. She was intruding, wasn’t she? As a superior officer that would have been her right, if her grade had ever been fit into the hierarchy at all. Either way, those days were over.

No locks, because nobody here would steal anything, and there was nothing to be stolen. They had offered her locks when she had moved in, and she had declined. If someone bothered her, she would take care of it, not a mechanism. Nobody had ever bothered her, not after their initial hour of training assessment, anyway.

It was her room, and it was not. Behind the door was a bedstead, just sufficient in height and width not to fall out, a blanket, a stand for clothes and boots to make sure everything was kept neatly. Personal touches did not concur with neatness. When she had been moved into the queen’s services, sleeping in a fully equipped servant flat had felt suffocating. Those first nights, she had volunteered to doze on the balcony.

Astraea clenched her teeth, gulping down the greyness that had started to rise in her throat. Stay in the present, she had been taught. She was not the guard anymore, nor the queen’s special attendant. She was Astraea, librarian, responsible of her own matters, friend to many. This relapse into a past that had come and gone was not effective to anyone.

There was a shortcut through the laundry window just around the corner which Astraea had sometimes taken, clenching her teeth at the idea what would happen if she were caught – ignoring that no matter how often the guys were caught, nothing more than a stern lecture seemed the result. A mad little giggle escaped her lips as she swung her legs over the balustrade of the garden below and landed in one of the delivery alleys around the palace. She had never felt imprisoned, but neither had she ever felt this free. A scary feeling, but also one that allowed you to jump over pieces of landscape.

Astraea fished her phone out of her backpack and dialled Jane’s number, a lovely old-fashioned way of communicating the humans loved so much. The phone took a while at the beeping, but finally Darcy’s voice could be heard over a background of tavern noises. ‘Hi, Astraea.’

‘Hey, Darcy. Is Jane okay?’ From giggles to panic in ten seconds. This was also rather human, Astraea had learnt.

‘Sure,’ Darcy said, her voice even more drawn than usual. ‘Had half a beer too much.’

‘What, a _whole half a mug_?’

Jane never spared the wine shelf a single glance when they were out to buy groceries. 

‘Yup. That was the half a beer too much.’

Only a short time later, successfully navigating through less crowded back alleys, Astraea found the tavern Darcy had chosen for her little night out. Leyla had not believed that her now-royal daughter could simply walk into a pub like that on her new home world, but Astraea had reminded her that the number of inhabitants did not extend that of _Common Sense_ by far. Everyone, and a princess especially, knew everyone else too well to disturb their after-work-ale.

‘That’s cool, guys, you can take the drink off. Have a nice night or two… I’m getting this wrong, but – duh,’ Darcy waved at the two guards sitting to her either side, both daring to show hints of relief as they stood up stiffly, bowed, and left.

‘Discipline has started to lack remarkably,’ Astraea snarled. Back in her days, neither would any guard have presented emotion, let alone judgement, about anything happening around them, nor would anyone have _sat_. In _public_. On _duty_.

‘So have the drinks,’ Darcy grinned. ‘Another!’

Astraea carefully pushed Jane a little up the bench, so the scientist, sleeping peacefully on her folded arms, could not fall off so easily. Darcy, sitting on a chair next to them, happily smiled into the freshly filled mug of beer that was shoved under her nose. ‘Always wanted to try that,’ she grinned.

‘You have to throw the mug to the floor,’ Astraea replied, unable to suppress that little smile creeping onto the left corner of her lips.

‘Not with the boss around. She’s particular about the destruction of dishes.’

Astraea gently pushed some hair out of Jane’s face to check her breathing pattern. Calm and steady like ocean waves. ‘I’m not sure she would notice.’

‘She would, believe me.’

For a moment Astraea pondered whether she should carry both her friends back to the palace, but then decided against it. Darcy looked too happy drawing patterns into the beer foam. A few moments longer would not hurt.

‘Aren’t you drinking anything?’ Darcy asked.

‘Shouldn’t one of us keep a clear head?’

‘Afraid of a bit of ale bringing you under the table?’

Astraea lifted a brow. ‘I should inform you that there are ways of winning the respect of one’s fellows other than excessive drinking.’ She nodded at the waitress who brought her beverage. The woman and she had a century-old agreement that involved a lot of beer-coloured water in exchange for the guarantee of this being the palace guard’s favourite tavern.

‘Sure,’ Darcy shrugged, munching on a piece of fried bread. ‘Cheers.’

‘To you,’ Astraea said. ‘Live long and prosper.’

‘Aw, you’ve been drinking already!’ Darcy grinned.

‘The question is _what_ you drink,’ Astraea grinned back.

Darcy shoved herself and her mug around the bench until she sat next to Astraea, with only the lightly snoring Jane between them. ‘This is better,’ she said quietly, ‘now I only have to look drunk.’

‘Juice or honey?’ Astraea asked just as quietly.

‘I asked them to put some milk into my hot water, but they didn’t get the reference.’

‘You can’t expect everyone here to know French cinema at your first day in office.’

Astraea made a mental note to find some embarrassing item of pop culture merchandise as a good-luck gift for Darcy’s enthronisation.

‘It is your celebration day,’ Astraea said softly. ‘You can celebrate, too. Have some mead. I’ll keep watch.’

‘Nice of you, but I’m fine.’ Darcy nipped some more of her not-any-ale. ‘Alcohol is bad for humans anyway, never liked it. This honey stuff is quite nice actually. I had a bit of a sore throat before… not that that’ll be any more of a problem after tomorrow…’

Astraea lowered her eyes so they would not give away her shock. ‘Tomorrow already?’

‘Tomorrow finally. I wasn’t supposed to become princess while still human.’

All of a sudden the honey water made sense.

‘It’s some sort of DNA transfer, as far as I understand, isn’t it?’ Darcy said quietly.

Now Astraea wished Darcy had taken the chance for a drink. ‘I don’t know well about these things…’ she replied. ‘Mine were all done before birth. That is the common way. But I have never heard that doing it later had any side effects.’

‘It’s this common then?’ Darcy asked. ‘I mean, does everyone do it?’

‘Sure,’ Astraea shrugged. ‘We’re a small population. You make sure of such things. It is a perfectly normal practice, entirely safe. Very old, too.’

‘A hundred generations and more, I read it up.’

Wondering what Darcy had read to know so much, and yet so little, of the procedure that would turn her from human to future queen, Astraea’s gaze wandered to the softly grunting Jane. She took Jane’s jacket from the bench and draped it over the woman’s gently heaving shoulders.

‘I’ve asked,’ Darcy said. ‘Or maybe I didn’t. Anyway, I’ve got more spots secured. If Jane wants to, she can do it. Some of my human relatives, too.’

‘Have you asked Jane?’

Darcy scoffed. ‘Why do you think did she drink tonight?’

Astraea exhaled in as much of a controlled way as was possible to her. The sheer idea – being able to live in the library, together with Jane, for the rest of her days – made her feel as if there had indeed been something fermented in her mug.

Even more quietly, Darcy said, ‘I wish I could make her accept.’

A nice, long workout. Half the morning, until the sun was fully up. That’s what she’d treat herself with at sunrise.

For a while Darcy seemed to accept Astraea’s silence. The false expression of drunk happiness still flawless on her face, her voice had dropped to barely audible levels when she finally said, ‘I don’t know how to do this. I can’t.’

A run around the lake, weightlifting with the rocks on the little peninsula, then a jog up the hiking path.

‘I guess nobody ever feels fully ready for this position.’ Astraea hoped she sounded soothing.

‘Sure, it’s what my new bros said, too,’ Darcy shrugged. ‘Not that Loki meant it nicely. But they’ve had a millennium of lessons each where I’ve had some months of internship. There’s so much I still don’t know…’ She lifted her eyes to Astraea, but quickly dropped her gaze again when she was sure to have her attention. ‘Seriously. There’s things I’m not told. Something about how things are run here, or were run once. Some filing, some detail that’s missing in the administration records, that sort of thing. I swear, there’s stuff nobody wants me to know, and I really, _really_ don’t want to know if it’s that bad. But it’s not like I had a choice now.’

An extra swim in the lake maybe. She’d have time, Jane would sleep and then be slowed by her hangover. Humans had that sort of ailment.

Except that the gatekeeper was not on duty. There went her little joy. 

‘There are… I can’t help you with these things,’ Astraea said.

‘That’s okay,’ Darcy said, raising her hands apologetically, ‘I really didn’t –‘

‘But I know what you mean. The things very little people know.’ Astraea took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be with you when you find out. Help where I can. I’m a librarian, I help people in their research. Okay?’

Darcy nodded. ‘Thank you.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so many clicks since the last update. Slightly scary...


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The gatekeeper had expected a call before his official hours of duty. He had not expected a shy knock at the door.

‘Did I wake you up?’ her little majesty asked with an expression of sincere worry on her pale face.

‘Would you like?’ he said, stepping aside so she could enter his room. It was a clear breach of protocol, but then, the palace had too many ears even at this time of night. The princess slipped through underneath his arm, and he closed the door behind her.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to intrude.’

He smiled. Still so human, in a polite way. ‘I take this to be an unofficial meeting. As such, I will let you in on a secret: I do not sleep.’

Her eyes widened in sadness. ‘I’m so sorry. Poor you.’

‘And without coffee!’ he said to lighten the mood. It made her smile.

‘I’ll get you some of the best as soon as I can.’

‘That would be very welcome.’

He gestured toward a chair by the room’s only window, in front of which stood a small writing desk. She nodded her thanks, sitting down clumsily.

‘How can I help?’ he asked.

‘I’d say I wanted to see a friendly face that isn’t hungover Doc Foster, not before the thing that’s gonna change my very species,’ she said, looking at her hands, ‘but that would hardly be an excuse for showing up here at this unholy hour.’

Not long after sunrise, he noticed when he looked outside. According to his ears, precisely the advantageous interval in which the last celebrators had finally fallen asleep, and the few early birds still roamed the dream realms. She could make everything look like coincidence, even the cake that had landed on Lord Xora’s head at the palace festivities last night.

‘Can you do me a favour,’ she said, ‘can you sit down?’

‘If that’s the only thing you require…’

‘Ask. I’m only asking. Always.’

He nodded, but sat down on the edge of his bed either way. Protocol would have to sleep away last night’s beers for a little longer.

How long, he could hardly calculate when the princess sat down next to him.

‘Your majesty –‘

‘The honey shortage.’

This was not what he had expected. Apparently it would be one of those mornings when he wished his first worry to be real, for the one following it had insufferable consequences.

‘The wood,’ she continued, ‘the iron, the copper. The contracts have run out, but nobody tells me how that could happen, or where the original contracts even are. I’ve scoured the library, I’ve pointed a swordfish at the head librarian’s heart –‘

‘I know.’ So did half the palace. ‘But I am afraid that I cannot help you.’

‘I know that, too.’ Her gaze lay on her hands again. There was no need to speak it out: his oaths were not merely of honourable nature. The magic bound to them had consequences.

She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t even find the bills for the deliveries. None of all those documents. No tax reports, nothing, and I don’t believe there’s no such thing’ she said. ‘I’ve watched people here. Everything’s noted down, even the loo times.’

He scoffed. It was an exaggeration, but that he had learnt to qualify as very human, too.

‘I cannot tell you –‘

‘You can tell me if there’s another library, or an archive.’

‘I am afraid that I cannot tell you that either. Not yet.’

She did not look at him, and the sight of her, this little woman, so broken in her tries of saving a world that was not even her own, stung in his heart. ‘However…’

‘You gonna offer me a hug now?’ she said, looking up with a sad smile on her face. ‘I mean, better than nothing.’

‘You are one interesting princess,’ he chuckled, but wrapped an arm around her shoulders either way. The gesture had grown unfamiliar on him, he noticed. If this was seen by anyone – there was no protocol for it, he realised. How refreshing.

‘Can’t we call each other first names?’ she asked quietly. Such a fragile little person, all soft. ‘I don’t know how you people get by… even Sif insists on being called a Lady, and we’ve practically been sharing a box of tampons that day in –‘

‘You can call me Heimi,’ he said quickly.

She looked up at him, surprised. ‘I didn’t think even you would be like that. Dudes…’

He grinned, letting go of her. ‘Your majes- Darcy,’ he said, ‘I would suggest, without wanting to presume, maybe a short stay of… recreational nature. A holiday, you might call it.’

Her eyes did not even narrow. ‘Is it okay for you to suggest such things? Don’t want to get you into trouble…’

‘There is a place that might be to your liking, very remote, very quiet.’

She straightened her posture, eyes awake and gleaming. He suppressed a grin. What a queen she would make.

* * *

Chance had it that when they returned home, what had been morning where they left was almost night. Casting a glance at Jane, Astraea assumed that her friend did not mourn this fact. Jane’s hangover of majestic proportions had been easily cured by the healers, but she did not look as if the memory had left already. It was the first time the human seemed not to have enjoyed their interstellar journey.

As they wandered down the big lawn, steering clear of sheep droppings as best they could in the gloom of dusk, a large shadow crossed their path. Moments later, Astraea felt Little Feather’s nose softly tip against her arm.

‘Hello, you. Have you had a nice day?’ The horse kept trying to sniff Astraea’s pockets while it trotted along. ‘No apples from home, sorry. Your other home.’

She could not quite interpret the gaze Jane was giving her, but it passed quickly when the library came into view. The library, its side entrance, and the small crowd of people that had gathered there.

Astraea felt Jane shyly take her left wrist.

‘Trouble?’ Astraea whispered.

‘Let me do this, please,’ Jane whispered back.

Astraea nodded and fell back a step. They had talked about this scenario when Darcy had sent them a message that getting an ID or even just a visa for Astraea would take longer than anticipated. This might be _Common Sense_ and Darcy was doing everything she could from her end of the galaxy to keep Astraea and Jane unbothered, but neither of them would do their friend injustice by lazily leaning back on her work.

‘There you are!’ they heard Mr Lewis’ voice as they went up the small hill to the side entrance. A moment later, they saw his slender figure push through the crowd. His normally weather-beaten face looked pale in the moonlight, or maybe he was not well.

‘Is everything okay?’ Jane shouted back.

‘Uhm – well – ‘ He smoothed back his ink-black hair, but it just fell back into his eyes. ‘This is quite embarrassing, but I think – as things are – we’ve run out of hamburgers.’

‘We might have some in the –‘ Jane was about to say, but Astraea elbowed her just in time. ‘Or maybe we don’t.’

What they saw when people finally cleared a path for them was a merry little barbecue feast in full swing, right on the narrow path to the library’s side door. In front of it, almost hidden in the mass of blackened metal, charcoal bags and foldable chairs, sat an entirely un-human item of craftsmanship. A very large hammer.

‘Odd place for a party,’ Astraea said.

‘Yeah, did we forget someone’s birthday?’ Jane replied quietly. Instead of more unnecessary words, Astraea turned Jane’s head in the direction of the door. ‘Oh shit,’ was what she received for a reaction.

‘Let me understand this,’ Astraea said, turning to the still very uncomfortable-looking Mr Lewis. ‘You all thought this would make a great place for a spontaneous party because… one of your daughters has become princess?’

He looked even more uncomfortable now. Quite as if he had just attempted to sit down on a hedgehog, Astraea thought. ‘Maybe that, too, but maybe… not only because of that.’

Jane’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve had a contest of who can lift that thing off our front step?’ They narrowed. ‘And you thought it so much fun that you made it a garden fete? On _library grounds_?’

‘Well…’

‘Okay,’ Astraea said very loudly so that everyone on the path, about half the wood surrounding the house, and definitely two whole streets in town could hear her clearly. ‘This is all very fun, and we highly appreciate that you tried to clean up our porch. Sorry that didn’t work. Hope you enjoyed your burgers, thanks for coming, have a good night.’

Several minutes later, a rather quiet group of barbecue enthusiasts lurched down the path to town. Mr Lewis hastily made his goodbyes.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Jane shouted after him when he had already reached the posts at the end of the garden path, ‘Darcy’s fine! Her surgery went very well.’

‘I know,’ he shouted back, once more turning to them. ‘She texted that she’s on a trip to some holiday retreat already.’

They waved after him as he crossed the lawn back to main street.

‘Is it just me or…’ Jane began.

‘If Darcy doesn’t tell us she’s off to some place, but she tells her Earth parents…’ Astraea mused. Her gaze fell on the hammer. ‘Little as can be done about Darcy, what do we do with this thing?’

‘Ignore it until it crumbles to dust? Use it as a pole for dog leashes?’ Jane shrugged. ‘Nobody can steal it anyway.’

‘But why is it here?’ Astraea kept asking.

‘Because nobody’s worthy of picking it up anymore, obviously,’ Jane said. ‘Or maybe it has overdue library books.’

‘As unlikely as that sounds, it would not be out of character.’ Astraea gingerly stepped over the handle and fishing the door keys out of her pocket. ‘I think tea is due.’

‘I’m in love with your way of thinking.’

They had just taken off their coats when a certain lack of sound from outside told Astraea that someone was trying very hard not to get heard. She gave the sign to Jane – another thing they had practised in foresight – and pointed at the door. Jane tiptoed behind the coat rack where she was difficult to see. They had no chance of dimming the lights without the small windows above the door telling their visitor that they had noticed. That only left them the element of surprise, and blinding light, preferably.

Jane said casually, ‘Would you like camomile or –‘

Astraea pushed open the door. Blinking into the brightness stood no other than the crown prince – ex-crown prince? Prince at all? Either way, his name was Thor, and he looked like a raccoon caught at stealing cat food.

‘Honestly?’ Astraea heard Jane’s voice snap from behind her back.

His highness tried a sheepish grin. ‘Hi,’ he waved, springing into attentive pose with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Sorry, didn’t want to disturb you…’

‘Lost something?’ Jane asked. Her words’ smugness slightly flattened due to her having to wriggle through between Astraea and the doorframe. Grinning, Astraea gave her a little more space. This was somehow gaining an entertaining value.

‘Oh, I was just… around,’ the prince grinned. The entertaining value sinking closely to zero again, Astraea wondered how Jane had fallen in love with this face in the first place. ‘Making sure you ladies got home safe. Cute house. Very… tree-ish.’ Correction: wondering how Jane had endured all that babbling for nigh on two years.

‘Why don’t you take your little toy there and go home?’ Jane said. ‘Or is it too heavy?’

Finally the grin on his face crackled. ‘How did you guess?’

Jane shrugged. ‘Three academic degrees and a Nobel Prize. It means I’m sort of brainy.’

‘What shall we do now?’ his highness asked.

‘I suggest a cup of tea,’ Astraea interrupted. ‘Nobody can take it away, meaning that it is quite safe with us.’

The prince glanced at the leather-bound handle, metal in between reflecting the moonlight. ‘Maybe I should go…’

‘Maybe we should make sure it doesn’t get dirty,’ Astraea mused. She bent down to inspect the hammer’s precise shape and size. One hand on the end of the handle, she leant against it to see if –

It moved.

Very well.

Astraea stood up, it was not heavy at all. ‘Jane, would you mind…’

‘Not at all.’ Instead of stepping aside, Jane relieved Astraea of her burden and placed the hammer next to the coats.

They were not done staring at each other when a maelstrom of rainbow colours made a smouldering mess of the front lawn, only to reveal Darcy. Eyes ablaze, she did not wait for the bridge to close before stomping up the garden path.

‘Sisters, we gotta talk,’ Darcy shouted before having cleared even half the distance. ‘Hi, brother dear. Do you mind taking the bus back? This is a professional meeting.’

‘But – do you see that –‘ Thor tried, but Darcy pushed him aside as if he did not weigh at least twice as much as she. Her treatment seemed to have been successful.

‘The ladies have cleaned up your mess, I’ve seen.’ She closed the door in his face. ‘Can we go now? This is important.’

Astraea straightened up. Entertainment was back on the agenda. ‘And would you tell us where we are supposed to go?

‘Ah, sorry.’ Darcy turned around to Astraea – turned further to Jane – then stepped back into the narrow corridor so she could look at the other two at once. ‘I’m afraid I can’t specify that right now, but it’s really, really important. Like – the thing we talked about? You were drunk,’ she added in Jane’s direction.

‘Yeah, thanks for the reminder.’

‘It’s for your own good,’ Darcy said. ‘Anyway. This is important. There’s really no time, I have to show you this place. It’s the _thing_ – I’ve found it. The place. I can’t explain it, it’s really – please...’

What was there to decide? Astraea had given her word to her future queen – well, maybe not her queen precisely, but her friend now already – and Jane would do anything for being able to explore. Okay, so would Astraea.

Colours, colours everywhere, and then the vortex spat them into the observatory, only to suck them in again, minus prince now. Where they arrived, it was dark.

Almost.

‘Have I promised too much?’

‘Wow,’ Jane gasped.

Astraea felt a disbelieving smile sneak onto her face. ‘You have not.’


	18. Chapter 18

It was no room. It was no cave. There must have been a ceiling above, but to say so for sure would have been as accurate as imagining the sky to be a cloth of velvet speckled with glitter for no other reason than looking that way. At least this was the impression presented to Jane from between the shelves the height of buildings.

‘You do know that we’re not done with the first library you’ve brought us to, don’t you?’ Jane asked.

‘Jane, you don’t understand –‘ Astraea breathed. Jane quickly took her friend’s arm and helped her sit down on a rock, or maybe it had been a stool several thousand years ago. Earth years. Logics dictated that they were not on Earth anymore.

‘This is the library. _The_ library,’ Darcy said. ‘Every historic document, collection of records and account of whatever’s happened is stored here. The accumulated wisdom of nine different solar systems, millions of years. If you were an anthropologist, boss, you could now sit down to write about the history of human civilisation as charted by veritable aliens, and you wouldn’t be done in twice as much time.’

‘Good thing I do astrophysics then,’ Jane mumbled, attention still lost in the feeble try of understanding the sheer amount of books, scrolls, and parchments she was seeing. Then a thought made her snap wide awake again. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘You’re a librarian.’

‘We both know that’s only half true,’ Astraea said sharply. Jane noticed with relief that her friend was back to herself.

Darcy sighed. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody here, so I guess there’s no better place to tell you.’ She pointed at the shelves around them. ‘You know what I’m looking for. If I’m supposed to become queen, I have to know everything about the place I’m ruling that there is to know, and by everything, I mean the shady business in particular. Obviously I can’t ask just about everyone to help me…’

‘So you thought of the Lady with the flying horse to reach the topmost shelves?’ Astraea smirked.

‘Now you mention it… that saves us hours of ladder- shoving.’

‘Darcy!’ Jane shouted. Her words’ echo rang through the hall, sending a cloud of dust down on them. ‘Oops…’

‘Here’s the other thing,’ Darcy said, sitting down next to Astraea and patting the place on her other side until Jane gave up on trying to find an excuse. She really did not want to sit on fossilised library furniture, polished by who knew how many alien behinds in all of time.

‘Please tell me they store knowledge about the Big Bang here,’ she said to Darcy.

Darcy grinned. ‘No such luck.’

‘To cut this a little shorter,’ Astraea said, ‘do you want Jane to build Einstein-Rosen-Bridges for you, so you can access this place easier?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jane?’

‘I – _what_?’ Jane said, staring at Astraea, then at Darcy, then back, then forth again. ‘You want – that’s impossible! I can’t! It’s not –‘

‘Alright,’ Astraea said, standing up. ‘That’s either a no or a maybe, but either way, we go now.’

To Jane’s astonishment, the wormhole opened up around them again, bringing them through half of space, into the observatory, and then back home. Darcy had not come with them, or so Jane noticed when Astraea complimented her up the garden path and unlocked the library’s side door.

‘Thanks,’ Jane said incredulously when Astraea was already halfway through the tea ritual.

‘No need to thank me,’ Astraea said casually, ‘I just wanted my cup of tea. Rude, interrupting us like that.’

‘It runs in the family,’ Jane said with a little smirk.

Astraea chose to concentrate on the brew, but the small grin on her lips spoke for itself.

When they both sat comfortably at the kitchen table with their teacups in front of them, Jane made sure that Darcy’s special app was running on her phone before she said, ‘Thanks for saving me there. I really have to think about – whatever that was.’

‘An independent way for her to access the library of the nine worlds,’ Astraea said quietly. ‘Either she doesn’t want the gatekeeper in on the business, or it’s supposed to keep her comings and goings off limits… or something else. Who’d have thought she would recover so quickly from changing species?’

‘Do you think there’s more to what Darcy is planning?’

Astraea shrugged, the focus of her eyes lost in the depths of her teacup. ‘I’m still trying to process that the library of the nine worlds exists outside of legend. Apart from that, I’m fairly sure that Darcy is doing things nobody could have an idea about as of now, but who knows when she’ll become queen? The king might be old, but that is no reason for him not to continue living for decades to come yet, centuries even. His magic is strong, stronger than his body.’

‘Or mind,’ Jane added almost to herself.

‘Without the throne officially hers, Darcy has a weak standing,’ Astraea said. ‘It’s not a good thing, everything in limbo. Queen Frigga is from Nix, she has little backing when push comes to shove. The princes could technically put their claims on the throne, Loki less so, but…’

‘Maybe we should part-time up there more often,’ Jane suggested. ‘Trying out that little tool we found on our doorstep.’

Astraea smirked. ‘As if you needed that to inflict abysmal horror in either of them.’

‘I’m not that terrible.’

‘You’re just fine.’

‘You might have a point, but I’m afraid we share this treat.’

Outside the moon stood high over the treetops, but the time difference and resulting jetlag did not allow for a nap just yet. Astraea leafed through a handful of books for a while, Jane checking her e-mails on the side, but neither found anything remotely worth their interest. It did not matter whether Astraea stretched first or if it was Jane’s stifled yawn, either way they ended up snuggled into the same sofa corner amidst a mess of blankets and throw pillows. A moment far too comfy to waste on talking. Except…

‘You’re worried,’ Jane murmured, stroking Astraea’s cheek as gently as she could.

Astraea sighed. ‘I don’t know if it can be called worrying.’

Jane knew better than to fork her own brain for questions she could ask. Silence was better than forced Q and A, that much at least she had learnt.

‘Everything is changing, and I’ve never had much of an idea what was going on outside of the palace anyway, apart from missions off the planetoid. But now…’ Astraea sighed, leaning against Jane’s hand. ‘It does not matter whether Darcy knows what she is doing… I don’t know how to express it.’

Maybe a little answering was necessary after all. ‘You don’t feel good.’

‘Yes. Uneasy. Not uneasy…’ Astraea sighed, frustrated. ‘I should enjoy being here, but I don’t. I mean, I do and I want to, but somehow – not?’

Jane frowned. ‘I’m not a psychologist, but – I think I know what you mean.’

‘Do you?’

‘Maybe.’ Jane sighed, and if just to have something to say that sounded remotely like Astraea. ‘Research budget gets approved and all I see is the amount of work that will go into putting together an expedition. Expedition is on the way, I’m nervous about the readings. Readings are amazing, I’m afraid I won’t be able to make something out of them. I come up with a theory, I’m unnerved by the publishing effort. Nobel Prize comes in… okay, I never expected to enjoy all that attention,’ she finished. ‘Sorry. I have no idea what that was supposed to be. Back to you.’

‘Jane?’ Astraea asked.

‘Yup?’

‘You can’t relax.’

‘Neither can you.’

Astraea stared at Jane for a moment. ‘You might have a point there.’

On a whim, Jane tried to pull Astraea closer to herself, so they could lean their heads against each other. To her mild surprise, Astraea not just agreed, she snuggled up to Jane’s shoulder. Oh dear. What now?

‘Do you want me to get you an appointment with Doc Santiago?’ Jane asked.

‘She is a general doctor, not a psychologist.’

‘She’s the only doctor in _Common Sense_.’

‘For human patients.’

‘And Mrs Tea.’

Mrs Tea had passed away twelve years ago, but Mr Tea still believed his wife to be around, if a tad more transparent. He insisted she stuck to her regular checkups, making her the town’s one and only ghost inhabitant.

‘Leisure time is difficult…’ Jane sighed.

She felt Astraea mumble against her shoulder: ‘What do you normally do?’

‘Watch TV… read… I read a lot before college. Novels, that is, not just astronomy stuff. I went jogging once in a while.’

‘That doesn’t sound so difficult.’

‘We could go to the movies. It’s fun, really. If there’s a good movie on.’

Astraea growled. ‘Would you do me a favour and tell Leyla that I’m not available for playing Wonder Woman at the premier?’

‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry,’ Jane said. ‘That’s so inappropriate. I’ll tell mom to tell her.’

‘Wow, that inappropriate?’ Astraea said, making Jane giggle. ‘Anyway…’ The drop in Astraea’s voice stifled that giggle. ‘I’d enjoy… doing distracting things. Fun stuff, if you will. So I don’t have to think about the same things all the time. All those uncertainties. Darcy, Earth, getting the library back into business…’

Jane nodded. Maybe she understood this, too. ‘Is there nothing – nobody you’d like to visit? At your old home?’

Astraea turned, away from her. The only direction. ‘My family, you mean?’

‘I didn’t want to say that.’

A sigh, but no move.

The silence chafed, but words would have been more difficult. Finally Astraea said:

‘It was decided who I would be before I was born. I always hoped that one day, I would see my parents in the audience of my honour ceremony. Maybe with a brother I could get to know, although I always hoped I’d have a sister. How could I return to them now? After having achieved – nothing?’

‘I wouldn’t call this nothing,’ Jane said. ‘Besides, you just became what, librarian of the universe?’

‘Nebula.’

‘Ouch.’

Astraea shifted again, turning so she could look Jane in the eye. ‘If I do what Darcy has asked, given that it wasn’t just something she decided in the spur of a moment while high on her treatment’s side effects, that would mean you would have to do so, too. I’m not asking you to make that decision.’

‘How about we make it ours?’

‘I had thought of that,’ Astraea said with a sly little grin. ‘Maybe Darcy should have considered a little more deeply who she’d bring together here.’

‘She’s not infallible,’ Jane grinned back. She could feel Astraea’s breath on her face. Somehow, it was not discomforting at all. ‘Although sometimes she doesn’t know that her decisions might actually be much better than she intended.’

Astraea raised a brow. ‘My, my. I’m only starting to fathom.’

Now it was Jane’s turn to feel sly. ‘I think you fathom a whole lot more than you usually show.’

‘Maybe I do.’

Their noses touched, and their foreheads touched, very gently. Jane saw Astraea close her eyes, so she did so, too.

Suddenly Astraea exhaled deeply. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t kiss. Never done it. Never liked the very idea.’

‘You’re not missing out,’ Jane said. ‘I mean, I do it as a sort of requirement, but – Darcy says that I look like I’m jumping at a tree and trying to eat it.’

‘Why would you eat a tree?’ Astraea chuckled.

‘Exactly!’ Jane sighed. ‘Actually, it’s not just the kissing, it’s all the other stuff, uhm, _happening_ , too…’

‘Unhygienic.’

‘Way too close.’

‘Overcomplicating everything.’

‘That in particular.’

Astraea said, ‘Honestly, that first night here, when you – I thought…’

‘Was it too much?’ Jane said, panic bolting through her brain that had just been so comfortably sizzling in the moment.

‘What? No!’ Astraea insisted, nestling up to Jane a little closer again. ‘It was just right. It still is.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jane asked, drawing a blanket over them and gently putting her arm around her friend. ‘Nothing we might improve? It’s rare to find a perfect concept right at first try.’

‘Very sure, although,’ Astraea’s eyes narrowed, ‘you are quite right. It is hardly the scientific way. We need more research.’

‘Agreed.’

She tried to wriggle a little closer, making sure Astraea could rest snugly.

‘You okay?’ Astraea asked, sleep crawling into her voice.

‘Mmm perfect…’ Come to speak of it, Jane had sounded more awake at other times, too.

‘Warm enough?’

‘Yup. You?’

‘Great. I’m not crushing you?’

‘Pfft. You’re tiny.’

‘What?’ Astraea chuckled.

‘Yeah, you might think yourself all so tall compared to humans, but I’ve seen you next to your people. You’re short, practically tiny. Fragile. You’re pretty much my size, in relation,’ Jane said.

‘You’re impossible,’ Astraea gave back, tickling Jane under her chin. The giggles this enforced only rendered their position closer.

‘May I compliment you on your –‘

‘Was that the front door?’

Astraea was so quickly on her feet that Jane lingered in limbo for a moment before she fell into the sudden hole under the blanket.

‘Whoever that is, I’m gonna introduce them to quantum physics all night for this! There’ll be a test!’ Jane growled.

Astraea waved her behind the door. ‘Now that’s very scary, but take cover anyway, yes?’

‘No need!’ Darcy’s voice let them know. ‘It’s just us! Wheeeeeeee, look at my favourite little librarians! Where’s the coffee?’

‘Hold her!’ a much deeper voice boomed through the hallway. A split second later, Darcy burst through the living room door, closely followed by both her stepbrothers. She did not get past Jane’s expert grab, who had had to keep her intern away from enough phone displays, all-you-can-eat-buffets and library sales (she should have known) to know what she had to do. Astraea quickly took the coffee tin from the kitchen table and wrapped her arms around it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Thor said. Loki kept in the back, his blasé expression at the sight of the living room not making things any better for him on Jane’s account. ‘We did not want to barge in like that…’

‘You’ve interrupted quite the thing,’ Jane snapped. ‘But – what’s wrong with her? She’s giddy enough to power a light bulb.’ Darcy snickered. Jane had never heard her snicker before. ‘Make that a chain of Christmas lights.’

‘Only some side effects of her surgery,’ Thor shrugged. ‘It will have worn off by tomorrow, at the very latest. She did not rest enough…’

‘That sounds like her,’ Astraea said.

Darcy sang into Jane’s ear, ‘I’m still in the roo-hoom!’

‘And now you’re going to bed,’ Jane decided. ‘Guest bedroom this time, young lady, no staying up late watching TV.’

‘Can I have a hot chocolate?’ Darcy sulked.

‘I’m certainly not giving you any sugar!’ Jane gave back. ‘You should probably eat though, I’ll make you a sandwich, or we have some leftover stew if you like…’

Astraea looked at her, then shrugged. ‘I guess there’s enough for a quick dinner… if you’d all like to stay?’

Thor cast a quick look at Jane, and he did not look too comfortable. ‘I’m sorry, really. I had to bring – that is, I couldn’t leave Loki –‘

‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I won’t throw any horse dung at you.’ Her gaze travelled to Loki’s sour face. ‘If _you_ don’t change your attitude though, I’ll reconsider that statement. I shouldn’t be the one telling you this, but you’re visiting, so behave.’

Turning to his brother, Thor said, ‘What did I tell you about manners in this house?’

Several minutes later, as she brought the now rather sleepy Darcy to her room, the freshly baked princess whispered into Jane’s ear: ‘I knew you’d make a super sweet couple.’

The proud grin on Jane’s face had not worn off when she had made sure Darcy was sound asleep and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. I thought you might not want to wait for this one for another week, but the last scene needed some more elaborate editing.


	19. Chapter 19

When it came to miserable mornings, this one made it quite high on Darcy’s scale.

‘Are you sure you feel fine?’ Thor asked as they walked down the corridors leading to the royal family’s quarters.

Darcy rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, as I said five minutes ago, a bit hungover, but nothing a good nap and second breakfast won’t cure. Not necessarily in that order.’

‘I was just wondering…’

Her ears twitched. ‘And yes, we can talk later. Actually, I insist.’

Thor stopped on the spot, giving Darcy some advantage for once. As if she would wait for him, after this morning.

‘Then you know – the matter I would like to talk to you about –‘

‘Dude!’ Darcy spun around on her heels, and the look of mild horror dawning on her new brother’s face was fully worth the ensuing pang of headache. ‘Do you think I’m blind? You’ve been making puppy eyes at Jane all breakfast – there, I said it! Do you have an _ounce_ of shame in your big head?’

He clenched his jaw. ‘I am sorry. I did not notice it was that… noticeable.’

‘Well, it was,’ Darcy snapped. ‘Not just that it was embarrassing enough to sour my milk, imagine what it felt like for Jane and Astraea!’

‘I did not mean any harm, please believe me. I do miss Jane, but I respect if she –‘

‘We gotta talk about this later,’ Darcy said. ‘Seriously. I appreciate that you want to talk about it, but right now I have to see to Loki, and after that I’d really like some nap time. Fate knows what the healers are gonna do to me if they find out I haven’t rested at all.’

Thor had brought Loki back last night already, not feeling able to handle two siblings at once, and returned for breakfast to accompany his sister home.

He nodded. ‘Of course, I should have thought of that. Should you have need of my help, I shall be at the stables.’

‘Have fun.’

She did not wait for a reply before picking up her path to Loki’s rooms again. This palace was too big to waste any time on smalltalk, and she had a tight schedule to keep. The healers did not need to know that her naptime would be spent on important paperwork Frigga had had sneaked into Darcy’s study.

The suites for royal family members, apart from king and queen, all opened to one corridor, meaning that if Darcy wanted to visit her brothers, all she needed to do was to walk a mile or two. Loki’s door opened before she had so much as knocked.

It was bright inside the vast entrance hall. Despite the sun of noon ascending to full strength at this time of day, all windows and terrace doors stood wide open, enlarging the place even further and allowing for plenty of fresh air, no matter the outside temperature. A new habit, according to the servants Darcy had interviewed, established since the night Loki had been allowed to move back in.

They had an arrangement, she and Loki. In return for making serious effort with a therapist and displaying all-round model behaviour, he had been allowed to leave his place in the dungeons and live with his family again. He was confined to these rooms otherwise, except when he went with his mother or siblings. Loki had agreed before having read the last paragraphs on the contract Darcy had given him, and so far had done quite well in therapy – if only two failed attempts at bewitching Doctor Diaz counted for anything. The doctor could stare down a statue if needed. She had demonstrated this skill at their first family session, leaving Frigga quite impressed.

‘Come in,’ Loki’s voice could be heard from the room he used as his personal library. A moment later he stepped out in person. Not an illusion, Darcy could see. Thor had taught her how to detect those. Still, he looked different –

‘Take a seat, I shall be with you in a moment’s time.’

The sizable meal prepared in the sofa corner – the palace equivalent of a little refreshment on the side – distracted Darcy from her thoughts.

‘Cool. Thanks. Mind if I –‘

A heartbreaking wailing interrupted her. Loki spun around to a tiny dot emerging the corridor to his private rooms, gaining speed and running at him.

‘Oh no,’ he said, bending down to pick up the kitten who came stumbling readily into his arms. ‘Have you woken? Poor thing.’

The kitten, all chubby honey-coloured fur and minuscule nose, snuggled into Loki’s arms. Now Darcy realised what was different: her usually so vain brother had for once foregone his layers of leather and metal in exchange for a soft, loose shirt. He looked almost relaxed, but she would have sworn on her hair colour that the style break had taken place in order to make a comfortable spot for the kitten. Judging from how quickly the little animal went from heart-quenching meowing to a content purr, face dug into the folds of the shirt, Darcy could be sure that this was not a new habit for either Loki or his tiny pet. She would know, she had practically been raised by cats.

‘I guess I should have been more quiet,’ she whispered, trying to hide a grin. Doctor Diaz was a genius.

‘It is alright,’ Loki said haughtily. ‘She does not mind so long as I am with her.’

It took about sixty percent of Darcy’s self-control not to giggle at this. ‘Does she have a name?’ she asked instead.

‘Her name is Mjá.’

‘Meow? That’s cute.’

‘No,’ Loki said with an air of annoyance, ‘ _Mjá_. You’re saying it wrong.’

‘Meow.’

‘ _Mjá_. One syllable, no stressing of the –‘

‘I’m teasing you.’

‘I know, but still –‘

Kitten herself decided to end the struggle by turning around and starting to paw the ribbons hanging down from Loki’s collar. He quickly grabbed another ribbon from the table, placed there in preparation, and saved his clothes from the tiny claws by dangling the toy in front of the kitten’s nose.

‘She looks well-fed and -groomed. You’re good with cats,’ Darcy said.

‘Why should I not be? It is hardly difficult,’ he said. ‘And speaking of feeding felines, you should eat. Magic uses up a lot of physical and mental energy, none of which you can afford to lose. Stick to fatty dishes. Those human meals are not nourishing enough for you.’

‘Finally we’re talking sense,’ Darcy said, her fingers wiggling in excitement as she scanned what had been prepared for her. The honeyed meat looked delicious, but she hadn’t had any fish for at least three days… she had asked the healers specifically not to speed up her metabolism so much, but there was no guarantee that it had worked.

‘I should of course inform you that it is risky to perform magic so shortly after having undergone profound surgery,’ Loki snarled.

‘Who do you think you are, my older brother?’ Darcy snarled back with half a grin, cutting off a hearty chunk of meat for herself and a piece of what could pass for bread, to wipe up the sauce.

‘This, and the person you asked to teach you the use of magic.’ Loki tried to reach for his own fork, but Mjá caught his wrist with her tiny paws and tried to gnaw it. He let her. ‘I shall not have my impeccable reputation as a sorcerer spoiled by a hapless student.’

Darcy hid her grin behind a hearty bite of breakfast, finding herself corrected: a rather fascinating morning indeed this was.

* * *

It was a fine late afternoon in spring that Leyla Lewis had chosen for her tea. The sun should not be so orange at this time of the year, a remnant of winter, Philomena Foster found. She was hardly used to these northern climates, but she liked them. The fresh, crisp air was something to look forward to every morning. So many things to look forward to, all the time. This tea certainly was a special occasion though.

‘She is one remarkable woman,’ Frigga, queen of space, said as they watched the Lady Astraea walked down the short path through the garden outside.

‘Indeed,’ Leyla replied. ‘It takes stamina to face a trinity of mothers as if it were a mere afternoon tea. Maybe I should have warned her in the invite…’

Frigga smiled quietly, ‘She knew whom she was facing.’

At Leyla’s questioning glance, Philomena explained, ‘The house is silent, there’s a distinct lack of clutter on the greens, and the lawn mower’s still stuck where Cousin Paul’s tried to clean up the wilderness under the salon windows.’

Leyla bit down on her lower lip, but assumed poise almost immediately again. ‘It cannot be all training though. Astraea has barely been here for some months, and she has already supplied me with a waterproof budget and staff plan for the library this year. One would never think that she is from another world, not to speak of the economic expertise.’

Philomena nodded, saying nothing. Jane had done some budgeting and organising for her research trips, but that certainly had not helped much in the library, especially with Jane’s current obsession over becoming the next Martha Steward. Astraea had entertained them with a story of how they fought over Jane’s wish to borrow every cookbook from the library at once, sort them by topic, and then cook herself through all of them to find out what was good. During the last two weeks, Jane had apparently made it through the entire basics of Italian kitchen, and only finished that quickly once she found out that Astraea did not like basil. A remarkable woman, the Lady Astraea, to put up with Philomena’s little whirlwind of a daughter. With all of Jane’s partners so far, Philomena had been afraid that they might – and often would – leave her daughter heart-broken. Now she hoped very much that Jane knew how lucky she was to have met Astraea.

Leyla, guiding them back to the settee where a fresh pot of tea waited for them, said to Frigga: ‘You must miss her very much. I can’t deny I’m glad to have her here…’

‘I do,’ Frigga interrupted her with a quiet smile that would not fool Philomena. When daughters went their own way… Jane had always been her own queen in her own queendom, she would never have bothered tracking along with her wayward mother. Knowing that Jane had a whole house to boss around, that she took care of her father with his head always in the spheres of literature, had been a great comfort to Philomena. They had been close, hadn’t they, despite the long distances between them? When had those six phone calls a day to tell each other what the apples in store looked like and how many sparrows had been at the window become one per week, and sometimes no more than a belated e-mail? Philomena had talked to Isaac about it during their daily chat, but one could not expect one of the masters of literary theory of the time to keep all the detail in their head continuously. Her husband’s thinking varied greatly from the way Philomena put everything into a picture in her mind.

Frigga’s words pulled Philomena out of her memories. ‘I cannot claim that she is like a daughter to me, much as I wished it to have been so.’ Philomena looked up in surprise. ‘It is not of my intention!’ Frigga quickly explained, raising her hands in defence. ‘Although – had I acted sooner, I might have – see, often it is assumed that being queen comes with the freedom to do as one wants, but that is not so. Not even being king gives you that power. I could not simply have changed the ways our guards are chosen, not even for the first woman in ranks since the Ancient Days – not as queen, especially not as a queen from another realm. We have no such distinction on Nix, titles are passed from mother to oldest daughter…’

Leyla held out a fresh cup of tea to Frigga, but she declined. ‘It was at a time when Astraea’s position was already disputed – not because of any shortcomings of hers, I must add - when I finally dared to bring up to my husband the suggestion of having Astraea assigned to my household. By then it was too late, I’m afraid. She had already learnt too much, too well, to accept that I would gladly have changed her status. Maybe she was wise in that… the palace does not necessarily take kindly to changes in their hierarchy. But I very much protected her.’

The steel in Leyla’s voice was a little too solid when she said: ‘You protect Darcy – Darcy is protected, right?’

Frigga nodded fervently. ‘In every possible way. We are all aware of what she faces. Although…’ She finally took the cup of tea from the table. ‘Darcy might be young, but she is fierce. If she does not want to adjust –‘

‘She changes the universe,’ Leyla nodded. ‘You will understand though –‘

‘That she is your daughter.’

‘Yes.’

Leyla tried to pour another cup of tea, but wondrously the pot had emptied again. Philomena could have sworn that it could hold a bucket of liquid, or if dry, about two medium-sized cats, as she had witnessed last Monday.

‘Darcy is smart. She has ways of getting away with everything, and people still like her,’ Philomena said when Leyla returned from the kitchen with a teapot full of freshly boiled water. ‘She’s asking for help when she needs it, but she also protects everyone around her. She is very good at seeing things as they are.’

‘And accepting no excuse for changing things into how they should be,’ Frigga added with a bit of a smirk.

Leyla looked a little flushed as she poured more tea. ‘It is kind of you to say that. I know what it looks like – mother of seven, job in politics, always busy with something else – but that does not mean I don’t love my children. I know them better than they give me credit. And I did not name Duffy MacDuff,’ she quickly added. ‘Her wrong name was Martin.’

Philomena chuckled at that, but she patted Leyla’s hand to make sure the chuckle would not be misunderstood. ‘Believe me, the press I got for leaving Jane with her father… as if it was anyone’s business.’

‘You might have guessed who receives most of the blame for Loki,’ Frigga said coolly.

Leyla stopped mid-cup. ‘I had the impression he took strongly after his father,’ she said. ‘No offence, of course. How is your husband?’

‘A little further away, every day,’ Frigga said quietly. ‘It is impossible to tell how much time is left for him, but… it sounds cruel to say that I wish he finally found peace, instead of this torment put upon his mind every day when he cannot remember the simplest things, not even the faces of his own sons.’

Philomena nodded. She saw Leyla do the same.

They had been told about the nature of the queen’s relationship to her husband – an arranged marriage between a young queen and a monarch from the other end of the galaxy that had served no other purpose than to secure peace for Frigga’s home planet, a long time without an heir before their first son was born, badly covered discrepancies between them. That this unlucky couple had still found respect and mutual strengthening in their union came close to a miracle.

‘I am all the more grateful for Darcy,’ Frigga said. ‘I cannot deny that I believed final disaster to have come over us when she arrived,’ she winked, ‘especially as she insisted on cooking everyone a family dish called Surprising Sprouts for her first dinner in the palace.’

‘Oh dear…’ Leyla sighed.

‘Now, however, I think she was sent to us by fate.’

Philomena smiled to herself. She felt similar every time Jane told her about the latest of Darcy’s stunts. Those would necessarily grow more scarce, now that Darcy came more and more into charge of a ninefold kingdom. Then she noticed… ‘We have swapped our daughters, haven’t we?’ she said.

After a look of surprise, both Frigga and Leyla smiled. ‘We have, haven’t we?’ Leyla said.

‘Maybe it is all for the better,’ Frigga agreed. ‘I have never seen my sons harmonise more than now they have to take care of a little sister.’

‘And… you watch over them?’ Leyla asked carefully.

‘Of course,’ Frigga said with a knowing smile. ‘And I know you keep an eye on Astraea and Jane.’

Philomena said, ‘Two, actually. I have accepted Duffy’s offer to stay with her. We seem to fit quite well, and we can take turns of caring for the house when the other is not in town.’

‘That is good,’ Frigga nodded. ‘The three of us can certainly watch better over them all than everyone on their own. You have… thought about Darcy’s suggestion? The prolonging of your human lifespan?’

‘I might have,’ Philomena replied, ‘but I haven’t got the chance to talk to Jane about it.’

Leyla said, ‘Likewise. And I think it’d be better if we waited for Darcy to become queen.’

‘It is impossible to tell when that will be,’ Frigga said.

‘I’m aware of that.’ Leyla’s mouth began to show a tension that had not been there all afternoon. ‘One way or the other, I would not mind having that decision taken from me.’

‘Maybe it’s better if you talk to Darcy,’ Philomena said. ‘After all, if what you say about that library is true, and I do not doubt that Darcy will get her will trying to lure Jane into doing more science – then the three of them will effectively be in charge of our galaxy quite soon.’

‘No less,’ Frigga nodded.

Leyla sighed. ‘To speak in the ways of my daughters – am I the only one who’s getting slight MacBeth vibes here?’

* * *

Astraea’s heart raced when she returned to the library. Leaving bed this morning had been such a bad idea, she wondered if she had angered some spirit of fate. First the breakfast during which the most splendid prince of the galaxy had left no doubt as to his aspirations toward Jane, then an invitation to Leyla Lewis’s afternoon tea, and finally having to face not just the mayor, but also Queen Frigga and Jane’s mother – all one night after Jane had finally… finally…

Where they in love now or what?

If only human practices were not so varied in these aspects, especially for people as nonconformist as Jane. None of the books Astraea had studied had given any useful answer. She would just have to talk to Jane. Somehow this seemed the least romantic option, and as of now Astraea wondered whether romance really was the path to walk.

The library was brightly illuminated when Astraea had wandered up the hill. Jane was probably still cleaning. No sign of Little Feather, Astraea noted with quite some sadness as she unlocked the flat’s front door, walked up the corridor – and almost into a large plastic box.

‘Oops, sorry,’ said the box. It was lowered to the ground to reveal Jane. ‘Just wanted to start setting up my lab before dinner. We might have to order something tonight. Or… go out, if you prefer.’

‘You’re – you’re doing what?’ Astraea asked, finally unable to compute any more surprises. ‘And are you using the mightiest hammer in the galaxy to charge your phone?’

‘We all have to earn our living,’ Jane shrugged. ‘And yes, I’ve made up my mind. You and that library belong together. Me being a lazy coward can’t stand between you two. I’ll work on those Einstein-Rosen-Bridges again.’

Astraea sighed. ‘Oh you…’

‘It’s okay!’ Jane chuckled as Astraea drew her into a tight hug. ‘It’s not as if I don’t love my science.’

Astraea buried her face in Jane’s hair. ‘And we love you back.’


End file.
